Computer Giant Facing the Heat

Microsoft, the software giant that brought you windows, word, outlook, and excel is in somevery hot water over a patent infringement lawsuite.

An article on CNET.com reported a judge ruled on Tuesday that Microsoft must stop selling Word, due to an ongoing lawsuit from i4Ia Toronto based technology company.

I4i sued Microsoft originally in 2007 for infringing upon its 1998 patent for a document system that eliminated the need for manually imbedded formatting codes the article said. Tuesdays ruling solidified the case in favor of i4i, and brought Microsoft’s total amount owed to the company upwards of $270 million.

In May, a federal jury in Tyler, Texas, ruled that the custom XML tagging features of Word 2003 and Word 2007 infringed on i4i's patent and ordered Microsoft to pay $200 million in the case.

In Tuesday's ruling, Microsoft was also ordered to pay an additional $40 million for willful infringement, as well as $37 million in prejudgment interest. The order requires Microsoft to comply with the injunction within 60 days and forbids Microsoft from testing, demonstrating, or marketing Word products containing the contested XML feature.

A spokesperson for the Microsoft said that are disappointed in the ruling and stand behind the belief that they did not infringe upon i4i’s patent. The case revolves around XML files, which enabled a document system that eliminated the need for manually embedded formatting codes.

XML--an integral feature in Microsoft Word--is considered a "page description language," with one of its key qualities being that it is readable by people, not just machines. Unlike HTML, which has predefined tags, XML allows developers and users to define their own tags for data, such as price and product.

The lawsuit is a big deal for Microsoft, because XMl is an integral feature of the new Word program. With Office 10 still in the BETA stages, Microsoft must now adapt to the ruling, and make significant changes to avoid facing this mess again in the future.

Either way it will be interesting to see how Microsoft reacts to this development moving forward with their line of products.

Joe Carretta