Back in August 2009, Microsoft lost a court case to a small Canadian software firm I4I. The lawsuit involved patent infringement. I wrote about the law suit earlier, and additional details can be found here. Microsoft has lost its last appeal and has begun to make changes to it Office 2007 and Word 2007 xml code to comply with the ruling.
The lawsuit accused Microsoft of infringing a 1998 XML patent in its Word 2003 and Word 2007 programs. The subjected technology in question involves “any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML,.DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) that includes custom XML,” according to a copy of the injunction released in August. Loudon Owen, chairman of Ii4i, said that he does not expect to stop sales of Word or Office 2007, rather that their patents have to be honored, even by software leviathans like Microsoft.
“We could not be more satisfied with the ruling from the appeals court which upheld the lower court’s decision in its entirety. This is both a vindication for i4i and a war cry for talented inventors whose patents are infringed,” said Owen.
Microsoft Office Logo
The Redmond Washington company was allowed until January 11, 2010 to make the change to the software or stop sales. The judge also issued an injunction that would ban Microsoft from selling versions of its word processing program Word that violated on the patented technology. For it’s part Microsoft dismissed the XML feature as a “little-used feature.” While, nevertheless with its attorneys, putting on a full court press. (!) Word, a part of Microsoft’s Office suite of software is used worldwide by several hundred million people.
What is XML and why is it important?
The value of XML is that it allows multiple data formats to be used by Word. At one level, XML’s set of tools allows developers to create web pages. But it offers more. Developers can set document standards defining what kind of information that should appear in a document. The sequence that it should follow can also be specified.
It can be used in combination with other standards. The content can be defined separately from its formatting, making it easy to reuse that content in other applications or for other presentation environments. But what makes it truly valuable is that XML provides a basic syntax that can be used to share information without going through conversion layers. It is like a universal translator. Speak XML and the language may be French, the country may be Australia, and the car may be Nissan…but the end result no matter where or when…will be the same. So the information in question may be between different kinds of computers, different applications, and different organizations and you will not need to pass through many layers of conversion. XML can take information from one context and apply it to another.
Microsoft may be disingenuous when it says the feature is little used…That may be but it knows how important it really is. It wouldn’t have included it if it wasn’t going to be a player in the future. The software inclusion could be so that in future editions of Word or Office, the stage is set for use. The i4i software patent clearly was a way for Microsoft to set up that future use of XML, whether it was a “little use feature” or not.
Microsoft has released a mandatory patch for Office 2007 that will bring Word in compliance with the court’s decision. Note that the original order only affected versions of Word and Office 2007 sold in the US.
Microsoft may be forced to comply, but this may only put a push on the release of Office 2010, which was slated for June 2010. Although it hasn’t been stated, the June date may be pushed up.
The original Microsoft response to the ruling is
here.
