Legal Research

i4i 2, microsoft 0 (end of 2nd period)

By David Cheifetz

From the Toronto Star report

A U.S. federal appeals court has upheld a US$290-million judgement against Microsoft Corp. in a patent case launched by Toronto-based i4i Inc.

The ruling also includes an injunction, set to go into effect Jan. 11, that would prevent the sale of at least some versions of Microsoft’s popular Word word processing software.

What does this mean to the Word/Office portion of the Gatesian Empire? I mean, apart from the judgment amount and whatever it’ll notionally cost it to recall Word & Office 2007 copies which can’t be sold if the injunction remains in place?

A Microsoft spokesperson has stated that it is “moving quickly to comply with the injunction”, which Microft says “applies only to copies of Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Office 2007 sold in the U.S. on or after the injunction date of Jan. 11, 2010″ and not to copies sold before that date.

The Star also quotes the MS person as stating that MS considers the code in issue to be “a little used feature” and that MS expects to have copies of Office 2007 and Word 2007 available for U.S. sale and distribution with the feature removed by Jan 11, 2010.

We are told that the i4i technology is not included in the Word and Office 2010 code. (Has Microsoft ever lied to us?)

Finally, of course, Microsoft is considering its “legal options” (the article doesn’t mention if the MS spokesman said anything about “illegal options”). These options could include asking for a rehearing or attempting to get the SCOTUS to hear an appeal.

Stay tuned.

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