Microsoft Ordered To Pay $290M, Stop Selling Word 272
Cytalk and other readers tipped us to Microsoft's loss in a US appeals court, in a patent case brought by Canadian company i4i. Microsoft must now pay $290M and either stop selling Word (and probably Office) by January 11, or somehow work around the patent by that date. A Seattle PI blog reports that Redmond has a few options left: "In a statement, Microsoft said it was working hard to comply with the injunction. The company also said it is considering further legal options, including possible requests for a new hearing or a writ of certiorari from the US Supreme Court." Update: 12/22 20:47 GMT by KD : Tim Bray has up a blog post explaining why it would be no great loss if Microsoft dropped the "custom XML" feature in dispute.
Update: 12/22 23:04 GMT by KD : Reader adeelarshad82 pointed out a statement released by Microsoft earlier today, which says in part: "We expect to have copies of Microsoft Word 2007 and Office 2007, with this feature removed, available for U.S. sale and distribution by the injunction date. In addition, the beta versions of Microsoft Word 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010, which are available now for downloading, do not contain the technology covered by the injunction."
Update: 12/22 23:04 GMT by KD : Reader adeelarshad82 pointed out a statement released by Microsoft earlier today, which says in part: "We expect to have copies of Microsoft Word 2007 and Office 2007, with this feature removed, available for U.S. sale and distribution by the injunction date. In addition, the beta versions of Microsoft Word 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010, which are available now for downloading, do not contain the technology covered by the injunction."
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:5, Informative)
You are wrong. The lawsuit and patent are very narrow and only affect an obscure feature of Microsoft Word that is used by a very small percentage of users. They do not have anything to do with the Office Open XML file format (otherwise this suit wouldn't just be Microsoft Word, it would be all the apps).
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:5, Informative)
i4i's patent is basically XML (yes it really is, read the patent claims [uspto.gov]).
I think you're wrong. From the coverage I've read, it's a method of processing and manipulating XML documents, and they designed an piece of XML editing software around it which they showed to Microsoft and Microsoft then stole the ideas from.
It does not predate XML, and has nothing to do with XML-based standards. For instance, i4i have stated that they do not believe OpenOffice.org, KOffice, Symphony etc. infringe their patent.
I'm sure some kind person will come along and back me up on this one.
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:2, Informative)
From the abstract of TFP:
"A system and method for the separate manipulation of the architecture and content of a document, particularly for data representation and transformations. The system, for use by computer software developers, removes dependency on document encoding technology. A map of metacodes found in the document is produced and provided and stored separately from the document. The map indicates the location and addresses of metacodes in the document. The system allows of multiple views of the same content, the ability to work solely on structure and solely on content, storage efficiency of multiple versions and efficiency of operation."
--Greg
Office "open" XML (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:5, Informative)
It's not going to disappear. i4i has said that certain applications that use XML (Such as Open Office) Do not infringe on their patent. Which means they didn't patent XML, they patented something to do with XML. Which Microsoft used, others do not. Thats why Microsoft is feeling the weight of this and not anyone else.
Since XML was started in '96 by the W3C, and i4i's patent was filed in '98, i4i does not own any of the rights to XML like you are saying.
Yes - Lots of places use XML. However, the chances of it disappearing are even less than the chances of HTML disappearing.
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:2, Informative)
It seems to me, though, that this covers the use of XML schemas -- at least, if they're constructed under program control.
--Greg
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:3, Informative)
No they are not very narrow. [betanews.com]
In the meantime, a company which was issued a patent in 1998 for the idea of maintaining a document's format in a separate file, has been awarded $200 million to a Toronto-based collaborative software firm, whose engineers claim they had the idea first. The case made by i4i Limited Partnership in its March 2007 suit essentially boiled down to the allegation that the entire move toward XML by Microsoft was a willfully executed strategy against i4i.
In 1994, just as HTML was first being investigated elsewhere as a vehicle for networked hypertext, i4i Ltd. applied for its US patent. For the time, its concept was novel as any notion of XML would be years away, and the applications for which XML would be used had yet to be envisioned.
"Electronic documents retain the key idea of binding the structure of the material with its content through the use of formatting information," reads the 1994 patent's background. "The formatting information in this case is in the form of codes inserted into the text stream. This invention addresses the ideas of structure and content in a new light to provide more flexible and efficient document storage and manipulation."
Did i4i create XML? Not specifically, though it did receive a patent for one of its principal ideas, years before the W3C began to come to the same conclusions. However, despite being what many observers at the time considered late to the game in adopting XML, it is Microsoft that ended up the loser in what some analysts are saying could be among the top five willful patent infringement awards in US history. The company has made clear it will appeal the jury's verdict.
Re:Obvious solution (Score:5, Informative)
Something doesn't add up here. Why is i4i not simply willing to license the rights to use the patent to MS (for an exorbitant fee). Why ask for it to be removed? Seems like a license to print money.
If you read about the issue in more detail, you'll discover that i4i tried for several years to get MS to pay for a patent license, and MS stalled and delayed and equivocated about it. The lawsuit was a last resort, and AFAICT the damages are so high as a punitive measure. In theory, MS shouldn't be able to get away with ripping people off just because they're the big kid in town.
But yes, I'm sure i4i could have done things in a better way -- they're not completely free from blame for this mess.
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:3, Informative)
For me, it makes data semantic-free so that it can be passed between systems, and changes on the transmitting end don't fuck up the receiving end. Plus, it's readable.
RTFP (Score:5, Informative)
The patent in question. [zdnet.com]. Decide for yourselves.
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:5, Informative)
The case involves the algorithms MS uses to open and display what they call "custom XML". It does not involve a patent on XML itself, and only affects Office 2003 and 2007, not 2010. Stop being so hysterical.
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:4, Informative)
I'm sure you both don't quite understand XML then. It's about data being accessible in a tree instead of a grid. It has similar benefits to using OO programming over procedural^w^w^w^w^w^w^w^w similar benefits to using highways instead of small streets to travel long distances.
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:1, Informative)
How much do you get paid by Microsoft for all this shilling/defending you do... seriously. You have quite a history of suck-up to Microsoft going on in just about every post I've read that you posted... you also tend to have a very thick distaste for open source and Linux in general... Steve Ballmer? Is that you?
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:3, Informative)
What? The USPTO would beg to differ. You need to declare any prior art you are aware of [duty of disclosure] or the patent can be invalidated for inequitable conduct.
Furthermore, the patent examiner is *required* to make a search for prior art during the review process.
Please, if you're going to be a slashdot lawyer (IANAL but I play one on Slashdot), do some quick googling before posting absolutely false tripe like that.
Re:Writ of Certiorari (Score:3, Informative)
Filing a request for writ of certiorari with the US Supreme Court is in essence a fancy way of saying "We're attempting to appeal to the US Supreme Court". There is, of course, no guarantee that the Court would take the case, the success on petitions for certiorari is something on the order of 1%.
was implemented in IBM Script/VS (Score:2, Informative)
The claim is (far as I can tell) for the idea of letting the tags be variables, whose meanings reside in separate lookup table.
The IBM 1980's-era Document Composition Facility combined their SCRIPT/VS product (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCRIPT/VS [wikipedia.org]) with their Generalized Markup Language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Generalized_Markup_Language [wikipedia.org]) but also allowed the user to create and use their own set of tags (so ... the tags within a document were variables) if they supplied SCRIPT/VS with a lookup table defining the meanings of the tags.
Either the patent should not have been granted to i4i or i4i's patent claim is something other than what you think it is.
Too late... (Score:2, Informative)
Microsoft already has a work-around. They've been pushing it to their partners since this morning at least:
http://oem.microsoft.com/script/contentpage.aspx?pageid=563214
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:2, Informative)
It's been a while but if I remember the i4i product allows you to author data in MS Word based on a document type definition (DTD). The use of Word to do so is not new. Another small Ottawa Canada based company, Microstar Software, were first to do so with their product called Near & Far Author for Microsoft Word (http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-16732008.html). This the same company that brought Near & Far view, a graphical view of SGML DTD, to market. They started working on Author around 1994-1995 time frame. I joined MIcrostar's Research Dept. in late 1995, so I can't say for sure when they started. Matt?
Author would take an SGML DTD and create a Word template that embodied the grammar defined by the DTD. This template along with a special plug-in would guide the user through the document creation process. The document's validity was verified using James Clark's SP SGML Parser Tool Kit, which was compiled into the plug-in.
Authoring was part plug-in and part Word Basic, such that when Microsoft switched to VB Script in Word 6, or there about, the product was not ported to the newer version of Word since sales were not as expected and it would have meant investing significant resources, for a small company, to make it compatible with Word 6.