Patent fun: Microsoft Word sales banned in the US [LWN.net]

Patent fun: Microsoft Word sales banned in the US

Posted Aug 12, 2009 14:00 UTC (Wed) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828)
Parent article: Patent fun: Microsoft Word sales banned in the US

Reading the patent (!), it doesn't bear much resemblance to .docx to me at all - in fact, it looks a lot more like the string-interning stuff that .xlsx does. Oh well.

If it affects OOXML, it almost certainly affects ODF. Doubtless "i4i" (how appropriate, eh?) have no product and are only going after the "big guns", although it would be quite worrying if they can extend their injunction over Word when they discover it has native .odt support too....

to post comments

Patent fun: Microsoft Word sales banned in the US

Posted Aug 12, 2009 19:15 UTC (Wed) by gouyou (guest, #30290) [Link] (1 responses)

Doubtless "i4i" (how appropriate, eh?) have no product

Actually they have a product.

Patent fun: Microsoft Word sales banned in the US

Posted Aug 13, 2009 5:11 UTC (Thu) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828) [Link]

They have a product based on *Word*?

Wow, seriously "down the rabbithole" time...

Patent fun: Microsoft Word sales banned in the US

Posted Aug 14, 2009 0:17 UTC (Fri) by richardfish (guest, #20657) [Link]

As I understand the lawsuit, i4i took offense to the custom XML feature of word that allows users to define a custom schema and attach it to a document, and then markup the content based on the schema. That seems match some functionality that i4i sells with its products.

It doesn't seem to have anything to do with storing documents in XML, or the OOXML/ODF specs. OpenOffice.org isn't affected because it doesn't support adding custom markup to a document.

I'm very surprised at the damage award. I have trouble believing that "custom XML" is used by enough office users to affect i4i sales, much less to justify damages of nearly $300 million!