AfterDawn: News

U.S. appeals court stays injunction on Microsoft Word sales

Microsoft Corp. has successfully managed to get the U.S. Court of Appeals to grant a stay of an injunction imposed on the Redmond software giant that would have blocked the sale of some versions of its Microsoft Word product. The court ruled that Microsoft met the requirements necessary for the stay to be granted, after the corporation requested it two weeks prior.

A federal district court Judge ruled last month that Microsoft violated a patent pertaining to Extensible Markup Language (XML) held by Canadian firm, i4i, and told the company it must stop selling the infringing software; Word 2003 and 2007. Microsoft claims Office accounts for over $3 billion in sales per year.



Had the appeals court not granted the stay, Microsoft would have had to stop selling the products in mid-October. Now the appeals court will hear arguments in the case on September 23. In addition to the injunction, the Judge had ordered Microsoft to pay $290 million in damages.

"We are happy with the result and look forward to presenting our arguments on the main issues on September 23," said Microsoft spokesman Kevin Kutz.

Written by: James Delahunty @ 4 Sep 2009 0:39

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• 12 comments

• KillerBug

  Hardly a suprise, probably done behind the scenes by the same people that sold office 2007 to the government.

  4.9.2009 02:42 #1

• jrpioneer

  its 2 bad they are still allowed to sell the software it would have been nice to see them loose some money for a few weeks

  4.9.2009 13:32 #2

• joe777

  Absolutely disgusting!!! Doesn't matter how much it would have affected microshaft, they should have been ordered to pull all infringing software now. If it was joe bloggs they would have been ordered to recall the software or got a huge fine for every day it wasn't recalled.
  Money talks eh!!!! Oh yes your honour do you realise how much tax we pay to the goverment and how much you will loose if we have to pull it now? What about the economy your honour? Microsoft was founded on lies, theft and deceit that's how they started their business and guess what things have not changed one bit.
  
  Edit: The judge(or whoever it was), all those years ago, should have broken the company up like he intended to do in the first place.

  4.9.2009 13:53 #3

• KillerBug

  More like "Your Honor, how do you like the new beach house that Microsoft bought you? Do you want to keep it?"

  4.9.2009 23:44 #4

• asilay328

  It is nice that a smaller company gets some compensation but $290 million is nothing compared to the 3 billion Microsoft earned with someone else's brain child. With rulings like this is it going to detour any other giants from stealing a small companies idea? A slap on the wrist for the giant so the government can get some of the preverbal "fat cash" aka taxes from Microsoft and their overpriced office software.

  5.9.2009 14:35 #5

• Todge

  So Microsoft get a stay of injunction.. So what. Microsoft, as well as anyone else, should be allowed to put their arguments across instead of just being ordered to remove and stop selling any offending products.. Just because i4i is a minnow compared to the giant MS, it does not mean it is automatically in the right.
  
  If, at the upcoming hearing, MS does not put a valid argument across, then they will still have to pay up and pull the software.

  11.9.2009 12:55 #6

• pmshah

  Originally posted by Todge: So Microsoft get a stay of injunction.. So what. Microsoft, as well as anyone else, should be allowed to put their arguments across instead of just being ordered to remove and stop selling any offending products.. Just because i4i is a minnow compared to the giant MS, it does not mean it is automatically in the right.
  
  If, at the upcoming hearing, MS does not put a valid argument across, then they will still have to pay up and pull the software.You must be joking! This may go on till 2020.
  
  First of all this implies that the lower court judge/jury were in error and by implication incompetent. This looks bad for the US judiciary.

  13.9.2009 23:56 #7

• joe777

  @Todge You have got it all wrong. Microsoft HAVE been found guilty and HAVE to pay damages. They are appealing the the point of having to pull all infringing software so quickly.
  What part of
  Quote:Had the appeals court not granted the stay, Microsoft would have had to stop selling the products in mid-October. Now the appeals court will hear arguments in the case on September 23. In addition to the injunction, the Judge had ordered Microsoft to pay $290 million in damages.
  did you not understand.

  14.9.2009 10:46 #8

• Todge

  I said..
  
  Quote:If, at the upcoming hearing, MS does not put a valid argument across, then they will still have to pay up and pull the software.Which is what they are contesting.. They don't want to pull their software off the shelves, costing them a potential fortune in lost revenue..
  
  Quote:Microsoft met the requirements necessary for the stay to be grantedSo now MS are allowed to put their arguments forward.. Which is fair.
  Just because MS is this huge company does NOT mean that it has to bend to every lawsuit thrown at it.. In some ways being as large as it is also makes it a large target.
  
  If at the hearing MS do put forward convincing arguments, then it should be allowed to continue selling it's software. If it doesn't, then it will be told again to remove it all from the shelves.

  14.9.2009 13:42 #9

• joe777

  You said they will have to pay up. Yeah halllloooooo they have to pay up no matter what the appeal says.

  14.9.2009 15:40 #10

• Todge

  They will still have to pay up..
  
  I said they'd have to pay up AND pull their software.. I wasn't arguing the fact that they had to pay the damages, only the fact that they had to pull their software.

  14.9.2009 16:43 #11

• joe777

  @Todge Look its simple you infringe on someone work, then you should pull all software immediately. If i4i had infringed on microshafts software then it would have been pulled quicker. Dont try and be clever with words, saying you meant this and that. They are guilty and HAVE to pay damages, so all that is left is when to pull the software. So yeah its a joke, we are guilty but we dont agree the timeline to pull the software. It is not fair at all.Since when is it normal for a company to be found guilty, but argue when they will remove the guilty works? As far as I'm concerned they have no right whatsoever for another day in court at the tax-payers expense. So again read the article that says microshaft have to pay damages NOW, but want a stay on when to pull the software. Its all ridiculous and the only reason they get their stay is because they can bully their way around, the small companies cannot do that, can they?
  Anyway its goodbye from me to this nonsense discussion with you.

  14.9.2009 17:28 #12