Microsoft Files "Emergency Motion" To Ship Word 221
adeelarshad82 writes "Several days after a judge ordered Microsoft to halt sales of Word and handed down $290M in fines, the software giant has moved to stop the ban. On Friday Microsoft filed an emergency motion to stop the judgment and waive the bond requirement, according to court filings. The actual document was filed under seal, so the full contents of the request have not yet been made public."
seems reasonable (Score:5, Informative)
Even if this is unquestionably a patent violation, the Supreme Court has already held, in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. (2006), that an injunction prohibiting sale of the infringing product is not necessarily the appropriate remedy in all cases. Rather, the traditional four factors for issuing an injunction must be balanced: 1) that the injury is irreparable; 2) that there are inadequate alternate remedies to compensate for the injury; 3) that the balance of hardships favors the plaintiff; and 4) that an injunction does not harm the public interest. Microsoft has an least a plausible argument that they are not satisfied in this case, and that alternate remedies (perhaps money damages) would be better than an injunction against sale, even if indeed Word is infringing.
Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side... (Score:3, Informative)
Nope. MS got what it deserved.
They did not question patent's validity in fear that it might undermine their portfolio. So let them suffer.
Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side... (Score:5, Informative)
They argued both that the patent was invalid and that they didn't infringe on it, in any case. They lost on both points, but they certainly made the argument.
Re:This is all so wrong (Score:3, Informative)
This isn't a "state-level" judge, its a federal judge.
The Constitution of the United States lays out the specific kinds of cases in which the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction, other than that, all federal judicial power rests initially in lower trial courts, with the Supreme Court only hearing appeals (and, for the most part, not even direct appeals.)
Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side... (Score:5, Informative)
Except, there are no patent trolls in this case. i4i ships and sells an actual product, the patented code for which Microsoft actually stole after working with them.
They may win this one (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side... (Score:5, Informative)
Except that the plaintiffs are not patent trolls and have a real and verifiable grievance.
Re:They may win this one (Score:5, Informative)
if this injunction stands and Microsoft then wins the case...
This isn't a preliminary injunction, they already lost the case.
Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I wonder if... (Score:3, Informative)
While you're being funny, if it was filed in Federal Court, the choices are Word Perfect or PDF...last I checked.
Re:seems reasonable (Score:4, Informative)
Too late. Microsoft beat you to it. http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Disclosures [w3.org]
Re:seems reasonable (Score:5, Informative)
I4i had 200 employees and was a growing, thriving business when MS came calling after 9/ll to learn how to do what I4i was doing. That's right. MS visited I4i to learn just how to do what I4i was doing. That's just how obvious and non-novel I4i's patent was at the time. It also proves MS knew the technology was covered by a patent.
MS blatently ripped off I4i and now they are crying because they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. They stole both I4i's technology and customer base. How? After incorporating I4i's technology into their own products they began to aggressively attack I4i's customer base. At the time I4i had 200 employees. Now they are approximately 1/7th of the size they were.
I'd say that it's pretty clear that I4i has been irreparably harmed by MS's unethical actions.
Re:I wonder if... (Score:3, Informative)
... PDF is an open format and it's harder to modify after receipt than a Word file.
You can edit PDF files in OpenOffice. It's not difficult.
Re:seems reasonable (Score:5, Informative)
I'm the AC you're replying to.
What does any of that have to do with the facts of the case?
MS didn't understand the technology. They went to I4i to understand it. I4i cooperated because MS came in concert with US intelligence and US intelligence was wanting to understand how they could search documents quickly after 9/11. That makes the technology, at that time, both non-obvious and novel to MS, the US government, and most likely the rest of the commercial software world, as they hadn't been able to find anyone who did what I4i was capable of doing. Just because, years later, you think you understand the patent and claim you can think of may applications that violate the patent doesn't invalidate the patent. It had to be innovative/novel/non-obvious then, not now.
Here's a link to give more background.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-biblical-vengeance-of-i4i/article1253054/
Re:You reap what you sow (Score:3, Informative)
By that definition, i4i is a patent troll
Except for that whole "without contributing anything to the real advancement of the arts" part.
Re:Why can software get patented again? (Score:3, Informative)
Except this patent is nonsense.
The patent is a system that covers taking a plain text file, and saying "from character 3 to character 42 is bold, from character 67 to 90 is in sans-serif. characters 3 to 90 are the first paragraph" etc.
I can tell you this is exactly how the Quark file format works. Quark 6 and above even use XML to do the styles.
Microsoft was fighting tooth and nail. (Score:5, Informative)
After reading the verdict its pretty clear that Microsoft knew about this patent and i4i long before they implemented custom XML. Its probable that they did infact learn about custom XML through i4is products and patents. Internal mails was shown where Microsoft did mention i4i and even their patent numbers.
It looks as if Microsofts counsels has done pretty much anything possible to defend themselves but the case is so darn clearcut that they just cant win. The problem for Microsoft is that Office Open XML has now become i4is bitch while ODF is wholly in the clear and unencumbered by i4i patents (according to i4i). Since ECMA-376 contains the i4i patented technology in the standard its worthless to anyone in the US.
Re:You reap what you sow (Score:2, Informative)
Or else who will i4i shake down next? OpenOffice? ...
Err... wake up.
As noted in several comments, i4i themselves have stated that Openoffice/ODF are *not* affected by this patent.
Re:seems reasonable (Score:4, Informative)
There has already been a fair amount of discussion and not everything that uses XML and meta-data violates the patent. For example, ODF uses a very different method than this patent for the same kind of task - and from the various commentaries they do not violate it; namely b/c they saw the method proposed by i4i and MS as the wrong way to do it.
They went after MS exactly b/c MS did their normal predatory behavior and they have a legitimate case against MS.
FYI - this doesn't mean that I support software patents (I don't!); but this case is exactly why MS was charged with using its monopoly in an illegal way, and really shows what they do. So it's nice to see them bitten by it like this.