US Court Tells Microsoft To Stop Selling Word 403
oranghutan writes "A judge in a Texas court has given Microsoft 60 days to comply with an order to stop selling Word products in their existing state as the result of a patent infringement suit filed by i4i. According to the injunction, Microsoft is forbidden from selling Word products that let people create XML documents, which both the 2003 and 2007 versions let you do. Michael Cherry, an analyst quoted in the article, said, 'It's going to take a long time for this kind of thing to get sorted out.' Few believe the injunction will actually stop Word from being sold because there are ways of working around it. In early 2009, a jury in the Texas court ordered Microsoft to pay i4i $200 million for infringing on the patent. ZDNet has a look at the patent itself, saying it 'sounds a bit generic.'"
Live by sword... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Does that mean... (Score:0, Interesting)
This is nuts. (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if you're not a Microsoft fan, you have to admit this is pretty frapped up.
According to the ZDNet article, Microsoft owns a patent on XML in word processor documents, but i4i owns the patent for "anything that touches custom XML formatting" in said documents.
The way i4i's patent sounds, this would also affect other things like OpenOffice.org and anything else that uses XML formatted documents. That's like, the entire current generation of word processors, isn't it?
I'm starting to wonder if patent lawyers can pick and choose who grants their patents from the Patent Office (they pick the non-tech literate ones) like they do with the courts when they sue over patent infringement (e.g. most patent cases are from east Texas).
-JJS
So is OOXML then no longer an 'open standard'? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Eastren Tx strikes again (Score:2, Interesting)
CSS also violates that patent (Score:3, Interesting)
But MS Holds the Patent on Using XML for Docs! (Score:5, Interesting)
The circle of life:
According to This Patent [slashdot.org], they invented having the XML hold the word processing info... It's just too bad that they didn't invent a way to write the xml file itself.
So, in the current US situation, no one can create an xml word processing document, as you can't write the xml, but even if you could, you aren't allowed to store the font and page number in the file.
This is beyond ridiculous
Re:Live by sword... (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft's many things, but they're never a patent troll, so I'm not sure what you mean there beyond simple schadenfreude.
Look, it's a matter of trust. These silly patents obviously hold water so it's not a matter of "can" or "can't". I don't trust any corporation, not because I'm paranoid but because the whole point of trading is to gain as much profit as possible. All businesses, especially larger corporations, have one goal and that is profit. If Microsoft finds itself in a difficult position (obviously not today, but perhaps about in 10 or 20 years), you can be damn sure that they will do anything in order to regain profit. You can't blame a corporation for having this ultimate goal, it's their end purpose. But it doesn't mean you should trust them, or even encourage them. I myself work within a corporation, and anybody who has ever worked in business management knows these very simple rules of business. Morals are shit, cash is king.
If you ask me any patent holder is a potential troll. Sure they're all nice and friendly when things are going well, but when the shit hits the fan the tables will turn, it's that or bankruptcy (e.g. SCO). So you see it's not a matter of "if", it's a matter of "when". Again I'm not blaming anybody and I would have done the same thing, as would any person who knows the first thing about business. But I'm not [currently] in that position, I'm on the other end, the consumer end, so naturally I have different motives. My question to you is, in what way do you, as a consumer, benefit from their patents? Don't say lower prices because we both know that's complete and utter bullshit, at least not in MS position. So you see there are none. Then what is your motive? Is it because you enjoy their products? Well there's no shame in that, but why side with the seller? If you enjoy the product you naturally want it, and by the fundamental goals of trading you want it for as little cost as possible. In order to get this you have to show your sceptism. Is the price really fair? Are the terms fair? Am I bound to anything which will make it difficult or expense when something better and cheaper comes along? If you don't trust them they will eventually meet you in the middle (not necessarily you as an individual, this applies to groups and audiences as well, but with even more effect), as long as there's some profit for them. Naturally any business must generate profit, but for your sake it should be as low as possible. Why else would MS want to lower prices or improve terms and products? To keep you as a customer? They do that simply by gaining your trust, which you've already given away.
So next time you think: "would a business do that for profit?" you should first ask yourself:
A) Is it legal?
B) Would it mean profit? (In this example it would perhaps not mean profit today, but remember that patents are valid much longer than one day)
If the answer is yes to both questions then the answer to your questions would be the same. That's how business works my friend.
Re:This is nuts. (Score:5, Interesting)
To be honest, the way I understand it is that every piece of software that produces an XML stream is infringe this patent. Think every piece of webservice and XML processing out there. I'd say that pretty much every piece of software out there infringes on this.
Patent withdrawn? (Score:2, Interesting)
If they have a sense of humour & irony (Score:3, Interesting)
It will be the Dodo.
Here's hoping that software patents become as dead as the Dodo.
Long live Eastern Tx (Score:3, Interesting)
IMHO it is lovely when patent trolls hit country sized companies who themselves lobby against any change in patent system.
Imagine if MS, IBM, Sun, Apple, SAP sized companies and FSF, Redhat kind of open companies&orgs gathered in a conference, use decades of their expertise to fix the patent system and provide suggestions to US Congress. Wouldn't they be taken serious?
They are looking for the problem themselves.
Re:Why hasn't change come yet? (Score:3, Interesting)
It may not be true for all, but it likely will be true for some, and if those "some" have the cash to support lobbying efforts...
Re:Tough call (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Does that mean... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm getting to like the new ribbons, but sometimes the location of a function seems a tad obscure....
So, instead of finding function X in obscure location Y, now you instead have to find it in obscure location Z? ;-)
Kind of, now you have to find function X in Obscure location Y,Z
RTF (Score:3, Interesting)
Does this patent not cover the same sort of things that RTF already does?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format [wikipedia.org]
Re:Does that mean... (Score:3, Interesting)
They could still get an injunction against distribution if the patent is upheld. Intellectual property law is primarily about intellectual property rights (free as in speech), not profits (free as in beer).
This happens with, for example, MP3 decoders. There is a patent on the MP3 format, it's valid, and the patent holders have monetized MP3 by charging a small fee for every player distributed.
That's "distributed", not "sold". It doesn't matter if you're making money off it, it only matters that you are distributing patented work that someone else owns distribution rights to.
So many Linux distros are sent out without an MP3 decoder, because that would mean that the distro manager would have to pay a fee to the MP3 patentholder for every copy distributed.
Some just ignore the licensing issues and either distribute the software "assuming" you have paid or will pay the fee, or distribute it in a country where the relevant patent is invalid (and if you happen to import it into a country where it is a problem, that's your lookout).
OpenOffice could (as others have stated) revert back to the Microsoft DOC format, but there's still a potential issue with the copies that are currently out there.
Note that I said "potential". i4i does not have to sue anyone - they could simply offer anyone using OpenOffice a free license to use XML data formats. Their patent, their rules.
In fact, the name, "i4i", implies the old "eye for an eye" rule. It's possible that this is a group of Free Software folks who have managed to get a patent on something obvious (as Microsoft has done so many times in the past) and wants to stick it to Microsoft the same way Microsoft keeps harassing open source folks with their patents on ones and zeros.
Re:Does that mean... (Score:2, Interesting)
It's a relatively inexpensive way to (a) increase the legitimacy of their claim by taking someone to court who cannot afford a proper defense and (b) sending a message that free software with their IP is not tolerated to scare anyone off any attempts to open source the IP.
That way, they direct all uses of their IP to commercial products where they can get their pound of flesh.
They WANT the people who have paid their licensing fees to continue using the stuff, so they keep collecting their fees. So, yes, they could easily do that to avoid competition against their licenseholders' product lines.
Microsoft may yet settle with this company in a licensing agreement. If that happens, Microsoft would be (at that moment) the only company licensed to provide XML-formatted word processing documents. It would be to Microsoft's competitive advantage to help i4i knock down any more troublemakers to maintain their temporary exclusive. :)
Re:Does that mean... (Score:2, Interesting)
As I stated in another post on another thread (or maybe this one, who knows), "i4i" would be pronounced "Eye for Eye", as in "an eye for an eye".
It could be that the patent troll, in this case, is a group that acquired a few patents so they could stick it to Microsoft for the whole "FAT/NTFS" thing, or whatever. Microsoft's certainly got a lot of patent property and has used it to scare the bejeezus out of a lot of people in Penguinland.
Maybe "i4i" will suddenly announce a cross-licensing settlement with Microsoft where everyone (Microsoft included!) gets XML formats as long as everyone gets FAT, NTFS, and a few other Microsoft properties free for use.
So, yeah, that crack pipe's got some pretty good stuff, man, thanks for sharing. Whoo boy.
Did you even read the patent? I did. (Score:4, Interesting)
--Original document--
<foo>This is a foo</foo><foo><bar>This is a foo bar</bar></foo>
--i4i patented storage--
Raw document:
This is a foo This is a foo bar
Metadata Map:
1 <foo> 0
2 </foo> 13
3 <foo> 14
4 <bar> 14
5 </bar> 31
6 </foo> 31
The idea is that you should be able to edit the raw data, or the markup, independently of one another. The patent outlines three core scenarios: 1) Taking an existing document with inline markup and separating the text and the markup, 2) Generating a "separate data and markup" document from scratch, and 3) Combining the markup and raw data of a doc generated from scenario 1 or 2 back together to produce a document with the markup inline.
So why is this neat? The patent claims that you can edit both the content and the markup independently of one another. Except that you would require a specialized editor that manipulates both components to be able to do this and still maintain the "mapping" of markup to raw data. Hate to say it, but I can already do this on normal, inline-markup documents using notepad, or any WYSIWYG HTML editor.
The other claim is that you could apply any map to any raw data. Except that, unless the character positions of semantic elements in the raw data were exactly where the "Metadata Map" expected them to be, the result would be a huge mess. Practically speaking, the application of a metadata map to multiple documents (since the map is based on character position) would most likely require additional inline tags to align the separate metadata to the content, thus defeating the whole purpose of the patent. Or maybe you could establish a "standard sentence length" in order to allow one map to be applied to different documents - that would be great.
I'm having a hard time understanding how the technology described in this patent is actually useful at all, let alone how Microsoft has infringed on it. In fact, if they *did* actually use this technology, then they deserve to be punished for using a stupid idea.