Microsoft Banned From Selling Microsoft Word and Office After January 11, 2010
Eric Calouro | Dec 22, 2009 | Comments 2
The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has apparently supported a previous ruling that would ban Microsoft from selling Microsoft Word and Office, two of the companies top products, beginning on January 11th, 2010. You may or may not recall, but we began talking about this in early August. If you’re not aware — Toronto-based i4i Inc. claims “Microsoft violated a 1998 patent (patent no: 5,787,449), which focuses on a method of reading the programming language XML,” I wrote in that post.
On September 3rd, 2009, Erictric reported that Microsoft was granted a repreive in the case, allowing the company to continue selling Word and Office until this court decision.
And since Microsoft has lost the case again, it’s an absolute huge deal, and one that Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer is shouting about. But don’t think Microsoft is giving up — no sir. Likely, a stay for the injunction will be requested, “this time to the Supreme Court,” says Nilay Patel of Engadget. But also likely is a settlement between i4i Inc. and Microsoft.
Which do you think will come first?
Filed Under: U.S.
All that will happen is the SCOTUS, loaded with big-business-loving conservatives as it is, will rule in Microsoft’s favor. Redmond has little to worry about.
@JKT – That’s a pretty ignorant comment. Even assuming that SCOTUS would take the case (very unlikely – it didn’t grant cert in the NTP/RIM BlackBerry patent case) there’s no reason to think the Court would favor a corporate petitioner (Microsoft) over a corporate respondent (i4i). Especially considering that the two most like authors of a patent decision (Kennedy and Breyer) are hardly “big-business conservatives.”