Judge Stays Microsoft Word Ban

[The Straight Story]

Judge Stays Microsoft Word Ban

A lower court decision to halt sales of the word processing program is on hold pending appeal.


Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) can continue to sell its Word document processing application until an appellate court hears the company's appeal of an earlier ruling that found the product violates the patent of a Canadian software maker.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday effectively stayed a lower court's ban on Word sales that would be effective in mid-October if upheld. Microsoft's appeal is slated for Sept. 23.

Microsoft Office, which includes Word, accounted for more than $3 billion in worldwide sales in Microsoft's most recent fiscal year and is used by literally millions of businesses and consumers for everyday tasks like word processing and creating spreadsheets and presentations.

Judge Leonard Davis, of U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas, ruled in August that Microsoft "unlawfully infringed" on a patent that describes how programs go about "manipulating a document's content and architecture separately." The patent, No. 5,787,449, is held by Toronto-based i4i, Inc. i4i develops "collaborative content solutions," according to its Web site.

i4i originally sued Microsoft for patent infringement in 2007.

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