Microsoft in Deep Waters: Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office sales barred from January 11, 2010

Microsoft is in deep waters with injunction imposed on its most popular products - Microsoft Word and Office. The Redmond giant company lost an appeal against lawsuit brought by Canadian XML specialists, i4i. This upheld the decision by the lower court favoring the infringement suit filed by i4i back in May. Microsoft was sued for using some of its XML patents in the current version of Microsoft Word. According to i4i, Microsoft violated a 1998 patent (patent no: 5,787,449), which focuses on a method of reading the programming language XML. The injunction would be imposed on the current version of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office barring their sales from January 11, 2010.

However, for the customers it’s relieving to know that Microsoft has versions free of i4i patent problems, especially those previously sold before January 11, 2010. The ruling would only affect the copies sold as of January 11, 2010.

There is little hope for Microsoft to escape the judgment. Microsoft would be appeal for rehearing by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, or taking the case to the next level, the U.S. Supreme Court.  It would cost Microsoft a $290 million to settle the patent battle.

The concern is, will Microsoft halt its Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office sales forever? No question of Microsoft barring its chief products, its clear from their statement issued over the ruling

With respect to Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Office 2007, we have been preparing for this possibility since the District Court issued its injunction in August 2009 and have put the wheels in motion to remove this little-used feature from these products. Therefore, 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.

To resolve the issue Microsoft will have to remove the infringing code that involves using customer XML data in Word documents. According to the sources, Microsoft might develop a non-infringing way to implement the feature. Or maybe it will buy i4i and its intellectual property, solving the patent problem that way.