Judge Orders Permanent Stop Of Microsoft Word Sales

This will probably be settled or appealed until it reaches the Supreme Court, but Judge Leonard Davis—of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas—has ordered a permanent injunction against Microsoft Word.

According to plaintiff’s attorneys:

The injunction prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML

This comes after a federal jury declared that Microsoft Word 2003 and Word 2007 custom XML tagging infringed on the plaintiff’s—Toronto-based developer i4i—patents, ordering Microsoft to pay them $US200 million in damages. This injunction orders the payment of another $US40 million for “willful infringment” and prohibits any sales, testing, and demonstration of any Word version containing the custom XML tagging feature. [CNET]