Microsoft Loses Patent Appeal On Word
Dec 23, 2009 - By Chris Weiss
A federal appeals court found in favor of Canadian company i4i in an appeal that Microsoft brought before it. The appeal related to a 2007 ruling in a Texas court that Microsoft had willfully infringed up an i4i patent in its Word 2007 program. The patent relates to a Word editing tool for XML.
The federal court denied Microsoft’s appeal yesterday and ordered the company to stop selling Word by January and pay Toronto-based i4i a $290 million settlement.
What’s all this mean for Microsoft consumers? Not a whole lot. Microsoft has a new version of Word ready to roll out for January, so there shouldn’t be any disruption of sales. The new version removes the patented code at the heart of the case to avoid any further legal issues. Upcoming Microsoft products Office and Word 2010 don’t use the problematic code either. [via AP and PC World]