Patent Law

The following is excerpted from a December 22, 2009 InformationWeek article by Paul McDougall:

An appeals court on Tuesday ordered Microsoft to stop selling Microsoft Word 2007 and other Office 2007 products by Jan. 11 because the software infringes on a patent held by a Canadian company. The judge also hit Microsoft with a $290 million fine.

In ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals struck down Microsoft's appeal of a lower court's finding that Word 2007, the most current version of the product, infringes on a patent held by Toronto-based i4i Inc.

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.

Those formats were at the heart of the patent dispute. DOCX is the default format for the most current version of Word, which is included in Microsoft Office 2007. Custom XML is used by businesses to link their corporate data to Word documents.

The court left an out for Microsoft. The company can continue to sell Word 2007 after Jan. 11 if it removes the offending technology from the product. Microsoft said it plans to do just that.

Read the full article here.