Court Forbids Microsoft from Selling Word

The lawsuit against Microsoft for infringing on XML patents with Word have been in the background of tech news for a while, nobody really giving any attention to it. But things just got a lot more interesting. Coming from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (a court notorious for courting … har har … patent infringement cases), Judge Leonard Davis has ordered a permanent injunction against Microsoft Word, prohibiting its sale or import in the US.

All this is happening because i4i, a Toronto-based developer, has sued Microsoft for $200 million in damages. They say Microsoft Word infringes on a custom XML tagging technology patented by i4i. This means Microsoft Word 2003 and Word 2007 (and presumably any copy of Microsoft Office because Word is in there) can’t be sold here.

You can bet Microsoft will probably be taking this thing all the way to the Supreme Court; they wouldn’t just throw away one of their most widely used products. That’s why you can also bet Microsoft won’t stop selling Office or Word. This should be fun to watch.

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