Judge bans Microsoft Word sales

[innominds]

The news seems to be interesting:

A US federal court has ordered Microsoft to pay over $290m (£175m) for wilfully infringing on a patent by Canadian firm i4i.


For more information visit:

BBC NEWS | Technology | Judge bans Microsoft Word sales

[Doc]

VERY interesting, Innominds. I'm going to have to dig into that a little. If the Canadian patent stands, it's really going to hit MS hard.

[danlefree]

Microsoft is already appealing the verdict (I'm sure they spend millions on legal every year - they're virtually above the law) and the injunction on selling Microsoft Word harms both Microsoft and the plaintiff, i4i (which build derivative products for use with Microsoft Word).

[Doc]

Originally Posted by danlefree

Microsoft is already appealing the verdict (I'm sure they spend millions on legal every year - they're virtually above the law) and the injunction on selling Microsoft Word harms both Microsoft and the plaintiff, i4i (which build derivative products for use with Microsoft Word).

Hi, Dan. I suspect that part of i4i's thinking may be that the judge will make MS pay i4i royalties on past, present and future sales, rather than a C&D, recall and damages.

[danlefree]

There appear to be ongoing updates over at Mashable (which is where I first heard about this one):

Of course, Microsoft Word is too instrumental to the Office suite of products to go anywhere. Worst case scenario, Microsoft will pay a settlement and update their software on the market with a patch to get around the restrictions of the ban.

“Davis said any version of Word that opens documents in plain text only, or which strips a document of custom XML through a process known as a transform, would be free from his order. That leaves the door open for Microsoft to issue a patch that alters MS Word’s functionality in such a way as to circumvent the ban.”

- EXPOSED: Microsoft Email Reveals Word Patent Infringement

[Doc]

It sounds, then, as though the best that MS might be able to do is to postpone the pain. I can't imagine that appealing is going to buy them anything but time. And I would expect that the continued use of their office suite during the appeal period is going to drive the damages up even further.

Thanks for the post, Innominds, and the further info, Dan.

[innominds]

Instead of upgrading the software, Microsoft is spending millions on legal every year.
Hope it would come out of this otherwise there would be a huge loss.

[Shift4SMS]

I look at it from a different angle: Another example why process patents need to be eliminated.

MS haters may cheer this verdict, but if any of these haters are involved in software development, chances are they have already infringed one or more process patents in their career. Process patents need to go.

[Doc]

Originally Posted by Shift4SMS

I look at it from a different angle: Another example why process patents need to be eliminated.

MS haters may cheer this verdict, but if any of these haters are involved in software development, chances are they have already infringed one or more process patents in their career. Process patents need to go.

You raise a valid question, but I'm far from convinced that process patents should be done away with entirely. If you invest several years of your life to the development of a revolutionary new coding method, don't you think you would want to be able to market it, without worrying about some large corporation, with deeper pockets, coming along and jerking the market out from under you? I think that ANY sort of intellectual property needs to have some sort of protection.

That said, it may be that a shorter patent period is more appropriate, or a more stringent patent review process (though I'd not be inclined to have a lot of faith in THAT). Matt Cutts said, tongue in cheek, that their ranking software had a half-life of about six months. That's exaggerated, but this industry IS extremely fast-paced, and the current patent period seems to be overly long. I suppose if I held a patent, it might seem overly short to me.

[Shift4SMS]

I understand wanting to protect something that took several years to develop, but I believe very few process patents took more than a day or two to develop. It might have taken several years to get through the patent process, but not to actually develop. A prime example: the famous or infamous "one click" check out.

Maybe if I had a few process patents examples that took longer to develop than write up the patent paper work and file, I might change my opinion.