Legal Commentary

Microsoft Ordered To Stop Selling Microsoft Word

By Jeralyn

Microsoft Office 2007 sells $3 billion a year. It contains Microsoft Word. An appeals court has upheld an injunction against the sale of Word beginning Jan. 11, because a portion of it infringes on a patent for xml held by a Canadian company.

The ruling means Microsoft can't sell versions of Word that can open documents saved in the .XML, .DOCX, or .DOCM formats that contain custom XML.

Microsoft plans to abide by the injunction and stop selling Word 2007, releasing new versions without the xml editor.

I have Microsoft Office but I've never liked Word. I'll take WordPerfect over Word any day, it's all I write in, but aside from a handful of lawyers who can't break the WP habit, I'm sure I'm in the minority. Maybe Corel will come out with a new version of WP and get back in the game.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on December 22, 2009 (boomark / email).