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Federal appeals court stays injunction on Microsoft Word sales

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Thursday granted a request by Microsoft Corporation to stay an injunction that would have prevented the company from selling its popular word processing program Microsoft Word. The court ruled in a brief per curiam opinion that Microsoft had met its burden to stay the injunction. Microsoft had filed the emergency motion for a stay of injunction on August 18, arguing that if the injunction were upheld, distributors of Microsoft products would be irreparably harmed. Microsoft did not release an official statement following the ruling, but a spokesperson did express satisfaction with the result. The court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on Microsoft's appeal on September 23. Microsoft filed its motion for an emergency stay less than one week after the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued the injunction. The court held that Microsoft infringed a patent for XML coding held by Canadian company i4i, which was the latest legal challenge for Microsoft. In June, a South Korean court ruled that Microsoft violated anti-trust laws by packaging software with its Windows operating system. In late February, Google sought to join anti-trust litigation against Microsoft in the EU, arguing that by packaging the Internet Explorer browser with the Windows operating system, Microsoft is stifling competition in the web browser market.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on September 04, 2009 (boomark / email).