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Microsoft loses again in Word patent suit

By Stuart Turton

Posted on 11 Mar 2010 at 08:44

Microsoft has lost its appeal against i4i, the Canadian company that sued the software giant for wilfully infringing one of its patents.

Back in August, The US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas sided with i4i, which alleged that Microsoft's Office suite infringed a patent relating to the creation of custom XML documents.

The software giant was ordered to stop selling Microsoft Word - the cornerstone of its Office suite - and pay more than $240 million in damages. It promptly appealed, claiming the verdict would cause the company "irreparable harm".

Why didn't Microsoft’s own patent portfolio provide the protection it was supposed to

However, the US Federal Court of Appeals sided with i4i, claiming there was "no evidence Microsoft ever made a good faith effort to avoid infringement".

We've asked Microsoft to comment on the story and are awaiting a reply. Unsurprisingly, i4i was far more forthcoming. "i4i is especially pleased with the court's continued decision to uphold the injunction, an important step in protecting the property rights of inventors," said Michel Vulpe, founder of i4i and co-inventor.

Analysts have expressed surprise that Microsoft wasn't able to ward off i4i. "Why didn't Microsoft’s own patent portfolio provide the protection it was supposed to?" asked Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

"I4i isn’t a patent troll and yet Microsoft didn’t seem able to use its own patents to prevent i4i from moving forward. It may be because i4i is so limited and focused on what it does, but this is somewhat unusual," he concluded.

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User comments

Yet another example of software patents being nonsense...

By cerebros on 11 Mar 2010

Am I breaking the law?

I have written a program that will add up the first ten numbers and output them. I'm wondering if anyone else has patented this idea? Perhaps I need to get a patent myself. How much will this cost me as a mere individual working from home. £10, £50 £100K?

By gfmoore on 11 Mar 2010

Read the Sources!

Can I suggest anyone commenting on this story actually reads the patent - it is easily accessible here:
http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P
TO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2F
srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5787449.PN.&OS=PN/5787
449&RS=PN/5787449
You will quickly appreciate the ludicrous state of the modern (particularly US) patent system! Not only is this patent a statement of the blindingly obvious devoid of any innovation at all, but when it was filed in 1998 there must already have been hundreds of software systems using the techniques described. The SGML standard was well established at that time, and any implementation of it would violate this "patent", as would virtually any GUI based HTML editor especially if it included CSS.

By JohnAHind on 11 Mar 2010

Microsoft Is Right For Once

The patent describes html + css. Stylesheets have been around since 1970, so the patent is invalid. They can't patent something that has already blatantly been invented.

By john_coller on 11 Mar 2010

what goes around comes around

It annoys me that some think that some people thoink Mr Gates doesn't deserve this especially when he himself was submitting some quite ludicrous patents pre-windows NT! most of which might I add were procured of the backs of others under questionable circumstances

By wes41880 on 12 Mar 2010

@wes41880

The Rob Enderle comment gives the clue why large companies file so many ridiculous patents. The ridiculous system forces them to do this on a defensive basis.

My criticism is reserved for "patent trolls" who actually try to enforce these patents and for the governments and lawyers who impose this asinine legal system on us.

By JohnAHind on 12 Mar 2010

I can confirm that the latest software update (9th March) removed this feature from my copy of Word 2007. I had been developing an application to use it, but found it didn't actually bring any new functionality. However, I am left wondering why a US court ruling should apply in Europe.

By c6ten on 13 Mar 2010

I was misinformed. Please disregard the above comment.

By c6ten on 13 Mar 2010

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