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."
New Anti-Software patent support perhaps... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
On the one hand, it's bad for Microsoft, so slashbot=happy. But it's a Patent win, so slashbot=angry. But it's a win for a small company, so slashbot=happy. But the small company appears to be a patent troll, so slashbot=indignant. But it's band for Microsoft anyway, so slashbot=[error: Stack overflow. Exiting.]
Love it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:New Anti-Software patent support perhaps... (Score:3, Insightful)
NOt likely. Microsoft has been stockpiling a massive arsenal of patents (as has IBM) in order to use patents as weapons. I really doubt that they would push for change in the right direction because it would likely mean that they'd lose a lot of their weaponry in doing so.
Nuclear warfare != patent reform (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
On the one hand, it's bad for Microsoft, so slashbot=happy. But it's a Patent win, so slashbot=angry. But it's a win for a small company, so slashbot=happy. But the small company appears to be a patent troll, so slashbot=indignant. But it's band for Microsoft anyway, so slashbot=[error: Stack overflow. Exiting.]
As far as I can tell, i4i is not a patent troll -- that is, they developed the technology, and developed and marketed a product based in said technology. In fact, this almost looks like a poster boy case for the upside of patents -- the little boy is using his patent to stop the big boy ripping it off. It would look better if it wasn't for the glacial pace with which the trial and appeal have proceeded.
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:2, Insightful)
If the do that, could this kill the atrocity that is XML? One can only hope.
Seriously - for formatting data, it's overly complex. For storing and transmitting data, plain old config files are easier to read AND easier to parse...
What actual purpose does XML serve?
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:4, Insightful)
When has prior work ever stopped a patent from being issued?
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:3, Insightful)
Amen to parent. I've never quite understood what good XML brought us.
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:RTFP (Score:4, Insightful)
No I pay taxes so that the courts can take care of these things instead of the masses.
Re:Missing option. . . (Score:3, Insightful)
> Actually if Microsoft just bought out the i4i company like it did Hotmail
> and others, it would then own those patents.
The shareholders would have to be willing to sell at a price Microsoft was willing to pay. My guess is that an offer was made and refused.
> Corporate Cannibalism is the word I would use to call that.
You, of course. would never sell your company for any amount of money.
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:2, Insightful)
I despise Microsoft, and wish they'd been broken up and Gates and Ballmer put behind bars for what they've done, but this patent is still absurd. The concepts have been around for forty years. The patent office is full of inept halfwits, and Microsoft's big failing here is that it's too cowardly to finally put its money into wiping out software patents.
Re:Office "open" XML (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:2, Insightful)
Likewise, I also despise Microsoft and their rotten practices stretching back decades, but i4i is a blatent, disgusting patent troll of the worst kind - seriously, it turns my stomach - i4i are the lowest of the lowest bottom-feeding scum of this planet. This is not a real 'invention', it's basically an obvious consequence of XML-based data editing and has doubtless been 're-invented' loads of times ... this patent will have a serious chilling effect on the entire XML software world, and will limit the usefulness and adoption of XML, if it isn't already, while the so-called "inventors" rake in truckloads of cash for their bogus patent. I have more respect for a common street thief than a patent troll, because at least the former isn't pretending to be doing something legitimate.
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:3, Insightful)
In addition, instead of violating someone else's patent (like the last two instances in under two weeks of violating someone's copyrights by stealing code), they could have just hmmm... this is a tough one....
OH! I remember... they could have just licensed the patent/code/whatever like numerous other companies do in similar situations. So, I dont feel bad about this happening to them. They've done the steal/"borrow" code and ideas thing numerous times in the past...
My only worry is that they get this overturned because of the "economic harm" or some other nonsense - or run this company out of business with the cost of appeals until a settlement is reached. It's high time they are found guilty of (and punished for) such crimes.
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:3, Insightful)
That may be true, but there are better options these days, less verbose, easier to parse, etc, like YAML.
The problem is, there's YAML, and there's JSON, and there are S-expressions, and a dozen other ad-hoc formats; and no-one can agree on which one of the "better" formats to use as the data exchange format.
Consequently, there is no single standard JSON or YAML or ... parser in Java libraries, or in Qt - you need to get a third-party one (and to do so, you need to pick one of the umpteenth alternatives for your platform).
Meanwhile, with XML: any language and any platform today has at least a basic parser as a standard component, so there's no need to pick, and no extra dependencies (pure ISO C/C++ being an exception, but people rarely code in that; otherwise, there is a "standard" XML parser in Win32, there's one in Qt, there's one in GNOME, etc). There's rich tooling available - for example, you can write an XSD or RELAX NG schema, and any of dozen editors and IDEs (including Emacs) can use it to drive code completion. You can trivially process and combine heterogeneous XML data using XSLT. And so on.
Yes, the format is far from perfect. Some things are inconsistent, some (e.g. DTDs) are effectively deprecated but still have to be supported, some are overly complicated. XML Schema in particular is an overengineered mess (but gladly we have RELAX NG). But overall, for all its flaws, it still does the job, and the interoperability benefits of everyone using it are worth the minor pain.
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:3, Insightful)
I propose to use JSON in all ajax-style applications instead of XML.
I can agree for that particular use case.
It's superior in nearly every way.
Depends on the usage. See below.
You'd be surprised how many ready-made parsers there are at json.org.
So, how do I pick the best one (or at least the "good enough" one) to use? The one that I can trust to be fully compliant, and that will be kept maintained and ported to new language/framework versions? Let's say, I need one for C++.
That's not necessarily true...
You misunderstand me. What I meant is that there are kinds of XML documents in which tags take up the minority of the content, and the majority is text. XHTML is a classic example; DocBook is another one. Essentially any scenario in which the basis is text, and the tags are markup on that text. Your SCORM example (that brings back some very unpleasant memories, by the way - I had to deal with this cursed thing) is about as far from it as it can get.
Now, for text markup, you can still represent it as JSON (after all, it's still a tree) - but just imagine how messy even a simple XHTML example would look that way.
Oh, by the way - JSON sample code in your post isn't actually JSON. In particular, you need to quote all keys, i.e. rather than:
identifier: "resource1"
you have to write:
"identifier": "resource1"
The only unquoted JSON identifiers are literals "true", "false", and "null". See RFC 4627 [ietf.org] for reference (though the grammar on http://json.org/ [json.org] also covers this).
Re:So... (Score:1, Insightful)
Why would i4i, a Toronto, Ontario based company, sue Microsoft, a Redmond, Washington based company in a Texan court if they aren't a patent troll?
Re:Say goodbye for XML (Score:3, Insightful)
In no way does it seem to me i4i matches a patent troll. I agree that the idea that someone can own such a trivial idea is dumb, but the patent is not "obvious" just because there are so many stupid different variants you could do which would achive the same thing differently. This is not something wrong in the patent system. This is the patent system working exactly as it is designed. If you don't like this, then you should be campaigning to get rid of software patents.