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Last updated: Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Microsoft has filed an emergency motion to suspend a judicial proceeding that resulted in a fine of more than $290 million. The move, although not unusual in patent-infringement cases, may save the company from having Microsoft Word pulled off store shelves. The software giant filed a motion Wednesday to stay a permanent injunction set forth by a U.S. District Court in Eastern Texas. On Aug. 12, Judge Leonard Davis ruled Microsoft was infringing on patents allegedly owned by i4i, a Toronto, Canada-based technology company, for custom XML in Word 2003 and Word 2007. As a result, Microsoft was ordered to pay in excess of $290 million and was issued a permanent injunction for the “449 patent.” The judge ruled that Microsoft willfully infringed on the patent and permanently enjoined Microsoft from selling Word 2003 and Word 2007 in the United States and using any infringing future Word products to open an XML file containing custom XML. With its motion for a stay, Micrsoft is hoping to get the injuction against selling Word lifted while the case is being appealed. Fighting Back At the heart of the debate is the technology used in Word. Typically a document in a computer program has two distinct parts, the content (the text the user creates) and the structure (the coding). Specifically, i4i said it developed and patented a method for separating markup tags from content when creating a formatted file that uses custom XML. The injunction stems from i4i’s lawsuit filed in March 2007 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas — a court considered a haven for small businesses that sue larger technology companies for patent infringement. Microsoft, however, continues to dismiss i4i’s claim and is now fighting the court ruling. The software giant filed a motion with the Court of Appeals on Tuesday for an…

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Appeal Seeks To Keep Microsoft Word on Store Shelves

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