Microsoft barred from selling Word in the US; fined $290 million for patent violation

A US court has ordered Microsoft Corporation to stop selling Microsoft Word in its present form in the US as it infringes upon a patent owned by Canada's i4i.

In his injunction order, Judge Leonard Davis of the US district court for Texas asked Microsoft Corporation to permanently stop selling, offering to sell, and/or importing any current or future Word products that have the capability of opening an .XML, .DOCX, or .DOCM file (an XML file) containing custom XML.

The court, after a seven-day trial, found the patent valid and was infringed upon and awarded i4i a total of around $290 million in damages. This includes $200 million in royalty, $40 million for willful patent infringement and another $37 million-plus interest.

The court barred Microsoft from selling any of the Word products that perform these actions, including Microsoft Word 2003, Microsoft Word 2007, and any other Microsoft Word products not more than colorably different from Microsoft Word 2003 or Microsoft Word 2007 during the term of US Patent No 5,787,449.

"This injunction, however, does not apply to any of the above actions wherein the infringing and future Word products open an XML file as plain text."

It also does not apply to any of the above actions wherein any of the infringing and future Word products, upon opening an XML file, applies a custom transform that removes all custom XML elements.