Microsoft Loses, No More ‘Microsoft Word’ After January …Wooord?

Heavy, heavy body blow to Microsoft today as a Seattle court has ruled against Microsoft and ruled in favor of Toronto-based i4i Inc. The Canadian company sued Microsoft for patent infringement on the code that allows for editing, interpreting and displaying XML in the longtime Windows app, MS Word–Office 07. The ruling upholds a lower court judgement and awards damages of $290 million to be paid to i4i Inc. But that’s not all.

Come January 2010, Microsoft can no longer sell MS Word in its present state. Microsoft is now calling the code that cost them $290 million, “a little used feature,” used little enough that anyone wanting the intact, present version of MS Word – Office 07 after January 11th, will find it a ‘little hard to get’ because of the “little used feature” or hereto now, infringed upon code. However, copies of Word -Office 07 can be purchased, but they will no longer contain the code that is very, very useful to those viewing and editing XML documents, no matter how insignificant MS tries to make the code out to be.

But Microsoft says don’t fear. They are working on a new 2010 beta of the word processing software without the code, and it should be good to go by mid 2010. Good luck with that.