View Full Version : Microsoft banned from selling Word in the US
Wise Young
08-14-2009, 02:56 PM
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/microsoft+banned+from+selling+word+in+the+us/3306762
Microsoft banned from selling Word in the US
Updated on 12 August 2009
By Benjamin Cohen
A federal court in the United States has banned Microsoft from selling its popular Word programme in the country and fined the company $290m (£175m) for breaching the patent of a Canadian software company.
i4i who are based in Toronto claimed that Microsoft violated their 1998 patent relating to the use of the XML programming language. XML within the Microsoft Office programme allows users to create documents that can be read by users with word processors,
Judge Leonard Davis ruled that Microsoft “willingly violated" i4i’s patent and fined them $290m (£175m) including $23m (£14m) for the willful nature of their infringement.
More significantly he banned Microsoft from selling or importing the software in the United States.
Microsoft said they would appeal the verdict but if they are not successful this could create a significant problem for the company as Word is integrated into their Office system which is used by tens of millions of people around the world.
They have 60 days to comply although it is possible that they could create an update that effectively removes the code that is under question.
Foolish Old
08-14-2009, 03:10 PM
WOW! Just, WOW!:agog:
Scorpion
08-14-2009, 03:24 PM
Whoa.
Foolish Old
08-14-2009, 03:28 PM
Wanna bet this ban is lifted by settlement, stayed, or overturned in less than sixty days?
Not good but I am sure Bill has it under control
Foolish Old
08-14-2009, 03:37 PM
What was the date of the ruling? There's very little news about this for the size of the story. Wonder why? The stock price hasn't been hurt at all this week. Must have been already priced by the market.
wheelchairTITAN
08-14-2009, 03:42 PM
It's about time that Canadians STUCK it to the YANKS!
Buy Canadian!
Foolish Old
08-14-2009, 03:45 PM
you sell stuff? :confused: who knew!It's about time that Canadians STUCK it to the YANKS!
Buy Canadian!
wheelchairTITAN
08-14-2009, 03:47 PM
Here is the interview with the Canadian owners and developers about Microsoft stealing their property ... video from from BNN this week.
http://watch.bnn.ca/wednesday/#clip202835
Judge Davis has a master's degree in Computer Science. I heard that in one of the e-mails sent by Microsoft, they were aware of the XML patent, but decided just to go ahead and go through with it. After listening to TWIT (This Week in Tech), i4i has about thirty employees and it looks like Microsoft will settle for two hundred million dollars. This is probably good news for the i4i employees who will get to split the two hundred million dollars.
Keiser
09-03-2009, 07:15 AM
Microsoft can't sell word... not that's just too piss funny:rofl::rofl:
zagam
09-03-2009, 09:49 AM
Why don't they just go back to the 97-2003 formats and save everyone one from the incompatible change.
In the change between 95/97 they kept the content-type application/msword which is registered, but with DOCX pulled a new one out of from who knows where so the recipient must guess the content. They only got the older 95 format stable in 4.2 and transition to 97 was very painful so why do it again?
I can open DOCX in Debian OpenOffice.org 2.4, but must save attachment first because of bogus content-type.
Van Quad
09-10-2009, 12:38 PM
OpenOffice is my choice after seeing what a mess they made of Excel. And the price is right.
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=011000UXST62
By Patricia Resende
September 4, 2009
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., has ruled in favor of Microsoft Relevant Products/Services -- for now. The court granted a stay against a landmark injunction by Toronto, Canada-based i4i, which told the court Microsoft infringed on its patents by using custom extensible markup language (XML) in both Word 2003 and Word 2007.
The ruling comes after the software Relevant Products/Services giant filed an emergency motion on Aug. 19 asking the court to stay a ruling by Judge Leonard Davis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, who ruled that Microsoft infringed on i4i's patent. Davis fined Microsoft $280 million and granted an injunction that would have stopped Microsoft from selling Word 2003 and Word 2007 in their current form after Oct. 10.
Microsoft's motion said taking Word off store shelves and away from partners and customers would cause irreparable harm. The appeals-court ruling will allow Word sales to continue while the case is appealed.
"We are happy with the result and look forward to presenting our arguments on the main issues on Sept. 23," said Kevin Kutz, a Microsoft spokesperson.
Foolish Old
09-10-2009, 07:28 PM
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=011000UXST62
By Patricia Resende
September 4, 2009
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., has ruled in favor of Microsoft Relevant Products/Services -- for now. The court granted a stay...
Cigar, please! (http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/showpost.php?p=1083418&postcount=4) :mega:
FO - Nail on the head.
http://www.eleveratechnology.com/cigars/casada_connecticut_toro_animated.gif
zagam
09-12-2009, 04:20 AM
Normally I always want Microsoft to loose, but software patents are absurd.
Who does that Canadian outfit think they are that they can make money out of PeeCees without Microsoft stepping in?
There are better reasons not to use Microsoft Office 2007 and 2008.
http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/showthread.php?t=123483
I don't think Microsoft Office 2010 is going to resolve any of these issues so just forget about using it and move on.
"Over 75% of organizations haven't upgraded to latest Microsoft Office"
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=23450
Foolish Old
09-12-2009, 03:50 PM
Damn, that was one good smoke! And I didn't even have to brush my teeth afterwards.;) Much appreciated, PN. Thank you, and thank Brian, Are you a cigar aficionado?FO - Nail on the head.
http://www.eleveratechnology.com/cigars/casada_connecticut_toro_animated.gif
Van Quad
09-12-2009, 08:22 PM
Normally I always want Microsoft to loose, but software patents are absurd.
Who does that Canadian outfit think they are that they can make money out of PeeCees without Microsoft stepping in?
They probably just want to be paid for their intellectual property. Microsoft blows chunks.
Much appreciated, PN. Thank you, and thank Brian, Are you a cigar aficionado?
FO: I am no cigar aficionado. :-) The i4i employees are probably lighting them up!
zagam
09-14-2009, 03:10 AM
OpenOffice.org and Open Document Format ODF should be okay.
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/I4i_v._Microsoft
Note that Microsoft Office 2007 does not use OOXML.
It throws an error when you try to open an them.
That means that there are no implementations that use OOXML by default.
OpenOffice.org can open .DOC, ODF, OOXML and .DOCX. Though extra work is required if they have been sent with bogus content-types.
metronycguy
09-14-2009, 03:27 AM
Normally I always want Microsoft to loose, but software patents are absurd.
Who does that Canadian outfit think they are that they can make money out of PeeCees without Microsoft stepping in?
There are better reasons not to use Microsoft Office 2007 and 2008.
http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/showthread.php?t=123483
I don't think Microsoft Office 2010 is going to resolve any of these issues so just forget about using it and move on.
"Over 75% of organizations haven't upgraded to latest Microsoft Office"
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=23450
any thing that replaces ms outlook for downloading email pop/imap and also be a combined pim.
i tend to like outlook because i use word as the email editor.
i am really bad on capitalization and punctuation , word takes care of all that.
that is the only reason i have been looking at office 2007, i have outlook 2002 on one or two computers.
zagam
09-14-2009, 04:54 AM
metronycguy (http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/member.php?u=3193), If you compose in Office Outlook you run the risk of creating non-RFC rich text email that can not be read or worse still a winmail.dat.
Mozilla Seamonkey can be used to compose RFC email. You can also do close to RFC email with OutLook Express. I use Sylpheed which is a GTK application. If you want to use the Office proofing tools then you can copy and paste text into the plain text email compose window.
http://www.bgc.com.au/%7Eandrewb/Netscape/bloat/outbreak/1options.pnghttp://www.bgc.com.au/%7Eandrewb/Netscape/bloat/outbreak/2plain_text.pnghttp://www.bgc.com.au/%7Eandrewb/Netscape/bloat/outbreak/3international.pnghttp://www.bgc.com.au/%7Eandrewb/Netscape/bloat/outbreak/4correct_default.png
zagam
09-14-2009, 05:07 AM
i am really bad on capitalization and punctuation
I can assure you that you are no worse than MS Word. The problems we have try to type SI units causes a lot of trouble. This along with the 8.5" x 11" logic bombs sent to our A4 printers show that MS Word is profoundly metric impaired as is unsuitable for use outside the US.
As you use more than one machine you will need to use IMAP. Mozilla and OutLook Express both provide this. Most mail clients are limited to spell check only. You will need to copy and paste if you want to use proofing tools.
My work with OutLook is is supporting customers of ours. We have found it vulnerable to remote attack due to ambiguous way it processes attachments so it is not used on our own network.
On our network be break OutLook so even though it can be configured any email sent from it will be silently discarded and will notify the IT department of the security incident.
metronycguy
09-27-2009, 02:25 PM
i dont use oulook express, i tried thst many years ago when it first came out.
it was horrible comparred to outlook, imo.
i like to edit in word since the capatalization is done automtically if you put a period it. the spell check is much better and quaicker than any other program i have used for email. This is ms word i am speaking of. ms word automaticallt does everthing when attached to outlook, it is transparant email editor once it is setup. i hate when i have a crash and ms word wont work and i have to use outlook spellcheck and email composing interface, night and day from word.
i tend to use html now, except for the email lists that requre plaintext . most of the stuff is web 2.0 now, so o only use pain text for a couple messages. outlook easily changes to plain text
i hate to have to buy it, been using a bootleg or oem supplied copy of outlook 2002 and the corresponding word program.
i have a couple new computers and i need to upgrade.
i do like vista windows email program,
k i use outlook 2002 to download via imap on 3 or 4 machines.
Van Quad
09-27-2009, 02:37 PM
i do like vista windows email program,
that was the part of Vista that pissed me off the most! I went back to Thunderbird after years of Outlook
metronycguy
09-28-2009, 02:39 AM
which outlook ? or outllok express.
i should say it is the first windows email program that had folders and imap downloading. i havent really used it , i have set it up on a couple computers where my outlook trial expired , and the computer that came without outlook trial version.
when i tried a mac , i quixckly found out that the mac version of outlook did not have the journal function .
i stopped using the journal function, now i use evernote
i had the trial of one note i hear it is very good but i couldnt figure it out as quickly as evernote