Microsoft has yet to complete the next iteration of the Office System, but the company has been ordered by a Texas judge to no longer sell future versions of the Word components of the productivity suite. Judge Leonard Davis, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, managed to handicap
Office 2010 even as the product is in Technical Preview stage, with the release to manufacturing planned for the first half of 2010. The permanent injunction was issued as Microsoft lost a patent infringement lawsuit filed by i4i Inc. At the same time, the software giant can no longer sell Office Word 2007 and Office Word 2003. The IP infringement case is related to Word's capabilities of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML.
“In accordance with the Court’s contemporaneously issued memorandum opinion and order in this case, Microsoft Corporation is hereby permanently enjoined from performing the following actions with Microsoft Word 2003, Microsoft Word 2007, and Microsoft Word products not more than colorably different from Microsoft Word 2003 or Microsoft Word 2007 (collectively “Infringing and Future Word Products”) during the term of U.S. Patent No. 5,787,449: selling, offering to sell, and/or importing in or into the United States any Infringing and Future Word Products that have the capability of opening a .XML, .DOCX, or .DOCM file (“an XML file”) containing custom XML,” reads an excerpt from the permanent injunction, courtesy of
Seattle PI.
Microsoft has a total of 60 days to comply with the court order, which was issued on August 11, 2009. At the same time, the software giant was ordered to pay total damages and interest of more than $290 million to i4i, after it was found guilty of infringing on U.S. Patent No. 5,787,499, issued in 1998, which describes the way that software manipulates "document architecture and content." Microsoft revealed that it would appeal the permanent injunction.
In addition to being forbidden to sell Office Word, the Redmond company can no longer test Word, a move that would cripple the development of the next version of the productivity suite Office 2010, currently in development and testing.
The software giant is also enjoined from “using any Infringing and Future Word Products to open an XML file containing custom XML; instructing or encouraging anyone to use any Infringing and Future Word Products to open an XML file containing custom XML; providing support or assistance to anyone that describes how to use any infringing and Future Word Products to open an XML file containing custom XML; and testing, demonstrating, or marketing the ability of the Infringing and Future Word Products to open an XML file containing custom XML. This injunction does not apply to any of the above actions wherein the Infringing and Future Word Products open an XML file as plain text.”
