This one might need some background info. In a suit filed in March 2007, Canadian software developer i4i charged Microsoft with patent infringement. The suit centered on Microsoft Word's ability to create and edit custom XML (extensible markup language) documents. Last month, a jury found in favor of i4i, and Microsoft was ordered to pay $290 million in damages. Additionally, the judge imposed an injunction prohibiting Microsoft from selling any version of MS Word capable of opening .XML files, as well and .DOCX or .DOCM files, which contain custom XML. All current versions of Word have this capability, so the decision could have taken Word off the shelves entirely until Microsoft could create a version without the offending features, or find another work-around. This week, the US Court of Appeals granted Microsoft's request for a stay of the injunction, pending the appeal of the original decision.
All this brings us to the real question: What does this all mean? For right now, nothing. The injunction has been postponed, so Word will remain on the shelves until the appeal process has been finished. But what would happen if Word were removed from the shelves? For most people, there wouldn't be much of an effect. MS Word would disappear from store shelves for a few weeks, possibly a few months, while Microsoft created a new version of the software without the features that infringed on i4i's patent. However, considering the large number of people who depend on Word on a daily basis, this gap in availability would be sure to negatively affect somebody. However, some bloggers and writers have expressed an opinion that this could be a good thing. Jeff Bertolucci of PC World wrote a piece exploring what he thinks could happen if Word were banned for a few months, or possibly for good. His opinion seems to be that the general public would start turning to free and open source alternatives if Word were unavailable. I find that I must respectfully disagree with Jeff's opinion. Word is the standard word processor for a large percentage of computer users, and switching to a product that many people have not even heard of before would be very difficult. Besides, chances are very good that Word will not be removed from store shelves, and if it is, it likely won't stay gone for very long.
Before I bring this post to a close, I do want to bring up one more issue raised by this lawsuit. The ODF open document format is an open source document file format, intended to become a standard usable across many types of software. ODF is XML based, and there have been some fears over the possibility that i4i's patent could cover ODF too. While this is a legitimate worry, the current version of ODF does not use the custom XML covered by i4i's patent, and it's worth nothing that the case against Microsoft may have more to do with a deteriorated relationship between i4i and Microsoft.
Additional sources:
Microsoft's 'Custom XML' patent suit could put ODF at risk
Injunction on Microsoft Word Unlikely to Halt Sales
Microsoft Word Ban: Maybe it Wouldn't be so Bad
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