Legal News

Microsoft Word-less?

By Ashby Jones

If Microsoft doesn’t tweak its Word word processing system soon, the company will be banned from selling it. Yes, that’s right. The word processing system that so many of us have come to so use, for better or worse, could theoretically be ripped from the shelves by October.

The situation is the result of a ruling made by Eastern District of Texas judge Leonard Davis on Tuesday. Judge Davis held that Microsoft infringed U.S. Patent 5,787,449, held by Michel Vulpe, the founder of a Canadian company called i4i. Judge Davis also assessed Microsoft some $290 million in fines. Click here for a story from PC Magazine; here for a piece from the Houston Chronicle (which links to the Seattle PI); here for Judge Davis’s order. Repping i4i: Samuel Baxter and other lawyers from McKool Smith; for Microsoft: Matt Powers and others from Weil Gotshal.

Microsoft was found to have infringed a patent which covered the “manipulation of the architecture and content of a document, particularly for data representation and transformations.” We’re not smart enough to know exactly what that means, but the long and the short: Judge Davis ruled that Microsoft could not sell Microsoft Word 2003, Microsoft Word 2007, or any future Microsoft Word products that might infringe on the patent.

However, according to PC Magazine, if Word was modified in a certain way, the judge ruled, the injunction would not apply. The court is requiring Microsoft to comply with the injunction within 60 days.

“We are very pleased with the terms of the Final Judgment,” said Vulpe in a statement. “The financial award due to i4i is now over $290 million and a Permanent Injunction has also been issued against Microsoft.”

“We are disappointed by the court’s ruling,” Microsoft spokesman Kevin Kutz said in a statement, according to the Seattle PI. “We believe the evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid. We will appeal the verdict.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on August 12, 2009 (boomark / email).