Judge orders Microsoft to stop selling Word 2003 and word 2007

I think Microsoft Word is an application that the world cannot live without. Sure there are plenty of alternatives at various prices. Open Office, Nisus Writer and Mellel are good options with plenty of features that in most cases surpass MSWord, but, undoubtedly, Microsoft Word has become a global habit. Almost a cultural habit I might say. And habits are hard to overcome.

Well, seems like the millions of “wordaholics” on planet earth (count me in) will need a special therapy group because yesterday Judge Leonard Davis from U.S. District Court in Eastern Texas has issued an injunction that prohibits Microsoft from selling Word 2003 and Word 2007 (yes, you read it well) after allegedly finding that the popular software contains technology that infringes a patent held by software company i4i. How about that! It really looks like fake news, but it isn’t. This court order means for Microsoft missing a shark bite out of the huge pie of 3 Billion dollars in worldwide sales. So it is a big, BIG deal.

i4i filed the lawsuit in March 2007, seeking an injunction and damages.

The permanent injunction specifically gives Microsoft 60 days to stop selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files containing custom XML. The court also orders the Redmont giant to pay almost 250 Millions of dollars for additional damages. (read official press release here) Very bad timing in deed, taking into account that Microsoft retail stores are a couple of months away to take the world by storm.

Click on image to read complete injunction.

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a free open standard similar to HTML that allows documents to have markups that define the content’s purpose and format. - for example, adding tags to certain fields in forms so the content can be database ready and have special properties - A number of XML “dialects” have been implemented as the default file format for many applications besides Office, like Open Office, Abiword and ... hmm how is the Mac App called? ….hmmm iwork. (swear I didn't Google it!)

I do not now very much about programming, but asking around, all my code infested friends told me Microsoft Office files were not open XML but rather XML based. Their dialect allows users to implement custom tags and share them across applications, and this is possible on part because Microsoft found a way to save the document separate from all the raw metatags. Sounds cool eh? You can read more specs here.

Now, read carefully this abstract:

A system and method for the separate manipulation of the architecture and content of a document, particularly for data representation and transformations. The system, for use by computer software developers, removes dependency on document encoding technology. A map of metacodes found in the document is produced and provided and stored separately from the document. The map indicates the location and addresses of metacodes in the document. The system allows of multiple views of the same content, the ability to work solely on structure and solely on content, storage efficiency of multiple versions and efficiency of operation.

See anything familiar? The above text is the abstract of the patent filed in by Toronto based software company i4i in 1994. It is called “Method and system for manipulating the architecture and the content of a document separately from each other” You can read more about the history of the patent and some info on i4i here. And if you are a real techie freak you can read the patent itself with all the mumbo jumbo here.

Elementary Watson.

Or is it? I think the whole case does have some merit. And that conclusion isn’t just an invention inside this bloggers vicious and twisted mind, since Microsoft earlier this year filed in their own patent titled “Word-processing document stored in a single XML file that may be manipulated by applications that understand XML”

Click on image to view full patent.

Oh shit. Come on, it’s impossible not to laugh at such a title. It’s damn obvious that this is a legal counter measure by Microsoft to dodge the i4i lawsuit. What seems to me is that the i4i patent has merit for an infringement case, but the patent is far from definitive or condemnatory. The abstract sure is related with Office Custom XML capabilities but in a vague and general manner.

As I began researching, the first strange thing that caught my attention was that I didn’t quite understood why i4i was so interested in bringing Word to the ground, since they profit from their sales too. This is a company that develops a software called x4o for implementing XML authoring solutions inside word. So, no Word, no x40 right? Hmmm… are we all going nuts?

Also, something that brings my attention is the fact that the lawsuit was suspiciously filed in a jurisdiction that in 2008 had more than 10% of its civil cases related to copyrights, patents and trademarks. This court is the natural ecosystem for a very dangerous species that I doubt you would ever see in any discovery special. This jurisdiction is a haven for patent trolls (bloodsucking briefcase pervertious). These savage creatures are recognized for dressing in impeccable designer suits and for having highly evolved brains capable of talking and emailing from their shiny iphones while slurping with finesse at their smoky cappuccinos. Patents troll cases are recognized for being issued not long before an infringement claim is filed and by being undertaken by young invisible companies that really don’t offer products or services related to the claim itself. Really bad creatures in deed.

The i4i case really does not look like a patent troll case to me, because the patent was registered more than a decade ago, and the company although small, is recognized in the field of XML custom solutions, specially in the pharmaceutical industry. But it is evident that they will earn much more money from a settlement with Microsoft than from the revenue of their software solutions. Otherwise they wouldn’t have made any claim at all. (Do you think that they would go through all this legal hassle if Microsoft were a tiny little software company operating deep in the forests of Hungary?)

It’s also clear that they cleverly chose a jurisdiction with the reputation of favoring patent holders over defendants. I think they just saw the opportunity and jumped right at it just as many of us would have done if we had the chance. This case seems to me very similar to the legal claim that the relatively unknown band “The Chiffons” made against Ex Beatle George Harrison for plagiarism of their song “He’s so fine” into Harrison’s hit and one of the most beautiful songs in rock history “My sweet lord”. Imagine the explosion of joy when the copyright holders of “he’s so fine” first heard Harrison’s song on the radio... It had to be like winning the lottery!

My predictions? Microsoft word will not disappear, because they will eventually settle with i4i or buy it completely. Or as last resort, they will add a patch so the existing XML customizing capabilities would meet precisely their patent and not i4i’s. In case of a settlement, i4i will have their desired share along with all the devilish, well combed lawyers and judges. And we, puny human everyday users will have to pay for that at the end.