Artwork: Chip Taylor
Microsoft's move was expected, as it had previously said it would appeal the verdict and the injunction that resulted from a patent infringement case it lost last May.Posted on 08/20/2009 7:19:00 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Microsoft late Tuesday warned of "massive disruptions" to sales of Office, as well as to partners such as Best Buy, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard, if the injunction that prevents it from selling Word 2003 and Word 2007 in the U.S. after Oct. 10 is not set aside.
In an emergency motion filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals, Microsoft asked that the injunction imposed last week by U.S. District Court Judge Leonard Davis be stayed, or temporarily put on hold, while its appeal is heard.
Artwork: Chip TaylorMicrosoft's move was expected, as it had previously said it would appeal the verdict and the injunction that resulted from a patent infringement case it lost last May.
"Microsoft and its distributors (which include retailers such as Best Buy and OEMs such as HP and Dell) face the imminent possibility of a massive disruption in their sales," Microsoft argued in the motion. "If left undisturbed, the district court's injunction will inflict irreparable harm on Microsoft by potentially keeping the centerpiece of its product line out of the market for months," the firm's lawyers added. "The injunction would block not only the distribution of Word, but also of the entire Office suite, which contains Word and other popular programs."
The patent infringement case brought by Toronto-based i4i in 2007 resulted in a $290 million judgment against Microsoft and an injunction that bars it from selling Word 2003 and Word 2007 after Oct. 10 unless they're altered.
Microsoft also complained to the Court of Appeals that while it has taken steps toward the latter solution, that, too, puts an unfair burden on the company. "Already, Microsoft is expending enormous human and financial capital to make its best effort to comply with the district court's 60-day deadline,"...
(Excerpt) Read more at pcworld.com ...
Threatens industry indeed. People everywhere will have to adjust from a life of fonts jumping for no apparent reason.
I'm not familiar with this issue. What's it about?
And they will have to do without the poor user interface and memory hogging word processor. How will they survive.
Fascinating.
I believe it’s a reference to Office 2007 changing your font style by just cursoring over one of the graphical “styles” at the top of the interface.
I’ve gotten used to 2007, but Microsoft needs to cut down on the resource consumption. Office products are HOGS!
What exactly did Microsoft steal from i4i?
I’m trying to care. Really. But I can’t see MicroSoft urging mercy from the court for somebody that used an MS patent when they shouldn’t have... Live by the sword?
It seems that MS infringed on a patent in regard to it's XML document format.
Thanks
Or, MS could unlock existing installations of Word so that you could use it on multiple PC's.
That would be it. Very annoying.
I use Open Office. It does everything I need and it is FREE.
Back in 1993 Microsoft released DOS 6.2. Included in DOS 6.2 was a utility called Doublespace, which allowed a user to compress information on a drive so that more info could be packed into a drive. Those were the days when hard drive space was expensive, and a software solution was useful. Now of course hard drive space is cheap, the technology that Doublespace represented is more or less forgotten.
A company called Stac Electronics had disk compression software and sued Microsoft for patent infringement and WON. They were awarded $120 million. So what did Microsoft do?
1) Quickly it came out with DOS 6.21, which had no disk compression software, but other than that was identical to DOS 6.2. This complied with the judgment, which said Microsoft could not sell any product with Doublespace in it.
2) Then after some software reworking Microsoft came out with DOS 6.22, which had a utility called Drivespace in it, which did the same thing Doublespace did, but did not infringe the patent.
3) Then they settled with Stac Electronics for an approximately $40 million dollar investment in Stac Electronics stock and a $40 million dollar payment of royalties to Stac. Stac took the money and ran, probably feeling that $80 million now was a better deal than fighting Microsoft's appeal of the $120 million dollar judgment, and risking the appeals court overturning part or all of the judgment.
I expect Microsoft to dip into the money vault and buy off plaintiff I4I in a similar manner. That's cheaper for Microsoft than further litigation, since they have lost, and I4I cashes in its lottery ticket and gets its money fast and without further risk.
i4i (the plaintiff) doesn’t appear to be a patent troll, but rather a smaller company that Microsoft thought they could just ignore/run over. At least, that’s what I gather from what I’ve read.
My understanding also is that i4i asked for $10M, and even in the lawsuit only as for $10M with standard “other damages” language.
The court found that damages were $200M plus $40M for willfulness plus a bunch of other stuff, for a grand total of $290M. And now Microsoft has a real problem because they were so d@mn arrogant.
Screw ‘em.
Not to worry, my Office 97 still works pretty well.
Same here. Downloaded "Open Office" and completely ditched Microsoft Office.
Or, as it has more appropriately been dubbed: Microsoft Tourette's.
I’ve found some problems in Open Office that make it difficult to work with using a MAC keyboard. I suppose MAC could add more keys or something, or maybe the Open Office folks could be a little more upfront about where the toggles are for the sliders. Plus, too much “blue” in the initial set up ~ that’s difficult for folks with weak blue vision, or for those who use viagra ~
Could someone explain to me how someone can “own” XML language? I’m curious.
you would be surprised how judges are just monkey see monkey do when it comes to tech.
Since federal courts moved to paperless judges tend to be more tech using but this does not change to tech knowlege. Think of the employee who only knows how to use the office computer and nothing else.
The judge could very well not know what XML is or means or is structured and how that matters or how unique or not unique that is. The judge might have just seen big microsoft and little canadian.
that said, what is so special about xml?
Overrated, and priced to match!
Microsoft should just revert back to the older version of Word, which works just fine and not loaded with a bunch of garbage that is mostly useless.
Is that why Microsoft Office continues to be the best selling office software at retail year after year for decades, bringing in billions of dollars every year in sales and profits, as consumers DECIDE by themselves to dip into their pockets and buy it?
That free market disagrees with your rant.
Court order should have been more specific. Allow MS to ship word but require the XML function that violates the patent to be removed (not just disabled). Further, require MS issue a patch that likewise removes the function from all existing Word installs on their next patch cycle.
The revamped interface of Office 2007 was an unnecessary change for the sake of change, that prompted me to delete not only Office 2007 but also the equally unwelcome Vista Ultimate from an almost brand-new computer that was given to me. That machine runs Ubuntu and Open Office very nicely and are good enough for my needs. I’ll keep my money and Micro$not can keep their change.
So--you don't actually save your documents, then? Why use a word processor at all?
You could save in a MS proprietary format.
That's the issue. MS has adopted this form of XML as their proprietary format. As a result, millions of documents have already been saved in that format. What do we do with those docs?
Screw ‘em.
I'm very pro-business and anti-lawyer in general. But, in this case, I agree with you.
Microsoft has been above the law WAAAAY too much for my liking.
That said, I will be VERY surprised if M$ doesn't find some underhanded way to make this problem disappear.
1. The original injunction is a just normal part of the court proceedings of this kind, as is Microsoft's appeal to have the injunction set aside.
It's almost certain that the Appeals Court will stay the injunction until the appeal is resolved (which could take many many years).
2. To elaborate, in order for the injunction to stand, i4i must demonstrate “irreparable harm” if Microsoft continues to sell Word. But there is no such irreparable harm, since the courts can simply factor-in additional amounts Microsoft must pay should they eventually lose the appeal.
3. At this point it's quite possible that the patent itself may (eventually) be invalidated based on “prior art”. There are probably prior arts in the multimedia processing world (audio / image / video) which are analogous enough in nature to invalidate this patent.
4. Both sides may consider settling during the appeals process. Even if you add up the $200 million from the original verdict plus the additional damages the judge tacked on, for Microsoft that's still less than a week's worth of profit.
If at any point in the proceedings, Microsoft think they're going to lose the appeal, they can simply license the technology for say $100 mil (sorry, “an undisclosed amount”) which i4i will happily take.
That kind of thing has happened lots of times in these kinds of cases.
You could either complain to MS and get them to settle and license the technology or use a conversion program that can read MS format and convert it to a more standard format.
The only issue I see with your analysis is that it depends on when the patent was filed. I've heard that i4i filed for the patent in the late 90s. That would make it very plausible that it's valid.
After a very quick read, it looks like the company invented a way of embedding the style code in a different section of the document from the content code. If you've ever tried to paste content from MS Word into an HTML editor, you can get an idea of what they're talking about.
For the record, I work intimately with a couple of flavors of XML every day and I realize that XML is not HTML. However, the concept is similar.
I would have to see an example of the plaintiff's documents to understand it further. On the other hand, embedded CSS in an HTML seems to me to be very much the same idea. Did MS steal the plaintiff's invention or did MS base it's idea on embedded CSS and just apply it to it's own version of XML?
Yeah?
Is that why a company, that is based in Canada, just across the border from Microsoft in Washington State, decided to go aaaaaaall the way down to Texas, to go judge shopping for in the most patent troll friendly state in the country?
“The court found that damages were $200M plus $40M for willfulness plus a bunch of other stuff, for a grand total of $290M. And now Microsoft has a real problem because they were so d@mn arrogant”
Ummm..Microsoft makes more than in just ONE week.
That figures is a rounding error to Microsoft. you gotta try a bit harder than that if you wanna take Microsoft down.
AFAIK, that doesn't matter. Whether or not you arrive at the same idea independently is irrelevant. He who patents first, wins.
Back off or we shoot Clippy! I see they’re going for the TBTF strategery. Not surprising since we’re all getting to pay for the last five batches of schlubs who were TBTF.
Oh, yeah, now there's a "feature". [ facepalm ] Sounds like 2007 is even more annoying than 2003, which I recently ditched for an upgrade to 97 -- "The Best Office Yet(tm)".
Elsewhere, Microsoft painted a bleak picture for users. "Even if the injunction will not affect Microsoft's existing Office customers, consumers and businesses who require new copies of Office and Word would be stranded without an alternative set of software."
The second is absurd to the point that they should find him in contempt of court or something. There's Open Office, which I don't like as well as Office. Corel still sells WordPerfect. I assume you can still get Lotus' Suite. But the point is there are MANY alternatives. People don't have them because they don't come pre-installed on their computers, but there are many alternatives.
But what would it mean if the second statement is true? It would mean the first statement is a lie. If Office were so irreplaceable that users would be at a loss without it, how can you say MS would permanently lose the sales from the embargoed period??? Obviously, when MS wins, which according to their story line they will, and Office is back in stores, there would be a big spike in excess sales equal to what would have been sold during those months. These guys can't even make one whiny, falling-sky forecast without contradicting the last one. Or are they saying that once people find out there ARE alternatives, the damage to MS would be permanent? And that it might spread to other MS products?
That having been said, I have no idea how the technology in question could be patentable, but I haven't followed the issue so that doesn't mean very much.
In a perfect world, that would be fine. But, as a consumer who has bought that product, I would strongly object to that. I can only imagine the thousands of businesses that that would sue MS, as well.
One can only guess at how a patch would affect us. LOL
The world of users has created, probably, billions of documents using those features, and without them, we wouldn’t be able to read those documents properly. Nor would they interact with the myriad of other documents we’ve created that allow need those features to operate as advertised. A whole new category of error messages would, in all likelihood, appear. hahaha
It doesn't matter if the end implementation is the same, and if the patent is valid. If two parties independently invent something and the first guy patented it, the second guy doesn't get to use his invention just because he made it without reverse engineering the first guy's.
Now a lot of software-related patents are complete bull spit (patenting the "shopping cart" or an obvious mathematical algorithm) and this may be one of them, so that's why I keep including a disclaimer in all my posts.
Yeah right.
So there are no Federal Courts in Seattle?
And is Seattle not very close to i4i’s offices in British Columbia, Canada, in addition to having Microsoft's massive headquarters with all their lawyers, and witnesses from the company there?
Did i4i go and get this legal team of theirs in Texas because they wanted to push the case in potent troll friendly Texas, or they have had these attorneys since the company was founded?
And why on earth would a company chose their legal team thousands of miles from where they operate their business anyways?
Are there no smart, powerful law firms in Seattle? They sure are not fooling me with this ridiculous story.
MS dug this hole and put their customers in this position. MS should be responsible for their error and the damages that their errors cause.
Gad...how I hate that.
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