It's getting closer and closer to check-writing time for Steve Ballmer, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has just upheld a decision that would see Microsoft Word and Office banned from sale starting January 11. If you'll recall, Microsoft lost a patent infringement suit against XML specialists i4i back in May when it was found that Word's handling of .xml, .docx, and .docm files infringed upon i4i's patented XML handling algorithms, but the injunction against further Word sales was put on hold pending the results of this appeal. Now that Microsoft has lost once again, we'd expect either another appeal and request for the injunction to be stayed, this time to the Supreme Court, or for a settlement between these two that would end this whole mess right now. We'll see what happens -- stay tuned.

P.S.- Just to be clear on this, i4i isn't a patent troll -- it's a 30 person database design company that shipped one of the first XML plugins for Office and was actually responsible for revamping the entire USPTO database around XML to make it compatible with Word back in 2000. What's more, the patents involved here don't cover XML itself, but rather the specific algorithms used to read and write custom XML -- so OpenOffice users can breathe easy, as i4i has said the suite doesn't infringe. Existing Office users should also be fine, as only future sales of Word are affected by the ruling, not any already-sold products.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/22/microsoft-loses-patent-appeal-word-and-office-to-be-barred-from/

That would be a 'biggie' as they say. I doubt they'll halt sales though, not in this economy - US wants commerce taking place and needs companies like MS to do well, particularly globally.

Still, stranger things have happened.

Do you really think MS would let Word/Office be barred from sale? It's not going to happen. What will happen is either:

1) MS will win the appeal (maybe unlikely given that they lost the first appeal)
2) MS will pay i4i to license the XML algorithms for use in Office. (most likely scenario)

i know they will find something or the other to stop the barring of sales but i was jst posting news.don't get down me

This ONLY affects Microsoft Office 2007. The Microsoft Office 2010 (beta) does not use the XML technology. And this implimentation only prevents Microsoft from selling Office 2007 after January 11th 2010, however.

Actually it will halt sales... however not that long.  All they need to do is remove the XML plugin.  Which they said they've already done... and the halt in product should be very short.

It's just one very minor piece of the software that can be eaisly removed.

I doubt it will come to sales being halted, one of two things will happen:

1) They'll pay XML people to use the algorithm.
2) While appealing they will just remove the algorithm and mark all current copies in stores as defects and have them returned.

Part of me really wishes this infringement had the potential to eliminate webpages created with MSWord.

I was surprised to find that a WiiWare site used MSHTML so exclusively that the site looked like UTTER SHIT in non-IE browsers. I couldn't believe that an indie dev would be so cheap, but I dare say if you could refresh my memory, the design choice wouldn't seem so ludicrous.

...I was interested in the actual game though, because it featured Snow White in Hotpants blasting zombie ninjas to fuck. HOW COOL IS THAT

so if I steal code, get sued over it and loose, all I have to do is stop selling it? How does that work?

MS is not on the hook for the millions of copies they already sold?

Why not just buy the 30 person company. They certainly have the spare change laying around to do that.