jatiN mahindrA doT coM

Update: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has reportedly granted Microsoft’s motion to stay an injunction that would prohibit the software giant from selling Word. The injunction had an effective date of Oct. 10, but the motion to stay blocks the injunction until the appeal process is complete, according to The Microsoft Blog.

Original Article: A Texas judge has reportedly ruled that Microsoft cannot sell any version of Word in the US that can open .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML. Seattlepi’s Microsoft Blog points to an announcement by the plaintiff, i4i.

In May, i4i in Toronto got $200 million from Microsoft, when a federal jury found that Microsoft infringed on the company’s patent. That patent is 11 years old. The abstract reads:

A system and method for the separate manipulation of the architecture and content of a document, particularly for data representation and transformations. The system, for use by computer software developers, removes dependency on document encoding technology. A map of metacodes found in the document is produced and provided and stored separately from the document. The map indicates the location and addresses of metacodes in the document. The system allows of multiple views of the same content, the ability to work solely on structure and solely on content, storage efficiency of multiple versions and efficiency of operation.

The entire thing can be read here.

"We are disappointed by the court’s ruling," a Microsoft spokesman is quoted as saying in a statement. "We believe the evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid. We will appeal the verdict."

Popular belief is that Microsoft will probably overcome this one. Microsoft not selling Word in the US? That will be the day.

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