Court: Microsoft violated patent; can't sell Word

First of all, i4i is not a patent troll, they are a document management company that actively deploys the technology on which they have a patent. One notable case of such is that they used it to overhaul the USPTO's own internal database.

Microsoft came to i4i and contracted them to help them move Word over to an XML format. They then tried to strong arm i4i into some licensing agreement which they did not accept so Microsoft just decided to willfully infringe. This means they decided they would just ignore the patent and use i4i's patented technology anyway without paying them. Essentially, they stole i4i's work when they refused to sell on Microsoft's terms.

More of the backstory in this article: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/09/i4i-says-micro...

josefresco3• 17 years ago

This happened in Texas. I don't care what the backstory might be, 110% of the suits that come out of TX are complete BS.

roc• 17 years ago

They might be an honest, hard-working group of good people who got tricked and steamrolled by their business partner (Microsoft).

But their patent is still crap.

The first claim of the '449 patent covers essentially any code that maps external XML data into a document. There is simply too much existing art in the file manipulation and database domains for this to be anything but obvious.

cookiecaper5• 17 years ago

This is good. We need more of these things to happen so that we can get some power behind the anti-software-patent lobby. Software patents have to become too dangerous to keep around, and that happens by things like this; right now, Microsoft and others use patents to lord over Linux and make vague threats about litigation. This is an important part of Microsoft's strategy, so software patents are important to them. But if more awesome things like making it illegal to sell Word and therefore Office happen, it'll be too dangerous to keep software patents around, MS will call up their cronies in Congress, and software patents will be out of commission in a year or less.

I hope all the patent trolls of the world open the floodgates on Microsoft, Apple, and the other behemoths in the computer industry so that we can finally put the issue to rest.

NathanKP3• 17 years ago

At the same time legitimate software patents can help to protect small software studios and startups. It is a double edged sword.

josefresco3• 17 years ago

I'd say it's still a one-sided sword. The side that crushes real innovation (and brings on crap suits like this) is sharp as hell, the one the 'protects' small startups is pretty blunt.

Vivtek2• 17 years ago

They're far more often used as bludgeons to drain the defense coffers of small software studios and startups. By the time a patent is granted, that startup has moved on to something better - show me a single software patent that a competent programmer couldn't develop in a few weeks given the description. Not the patented mechanism (that's generally obvious and we all know it), just what the invention is supposed to solve.

Software patents are an abuse of the patent system.

breck• 17 years ago

> "legitimate software patents"

I think the issue here is a lot of people don't think there is such a thing.

flatline• 17 years ago

Protection results in a racket as its ultimate end. I see small studios and startups doing just fine right now without patents, which are expensive and require a lot of specialized knowledge to apply for. Who is being protected from what by patents, exactly?

wglb2• 17 years ago

One author at http://www.tinaja.com/patnt01.asp feels that the break-even point for patents is $12 to $14 million.

kiba2• 17 years ago

It is presumptuous to think that megacorporation have the foresight to predicts the "next big things" and react accordingly and fast enough.

They might not even want to because it will cannibalize their existing business.

There's a reason why small startup can run circles around bigger corporations all the time and it's not legal weaponry.

cloudkj2• 17 years ago

I'd argue that, rather than banning software patents outright, the process by which these patents are approved should be put under high scrutiny and changed. For a lot of large companies, the approach really is similar to throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks. Having gone through the process recently, I'm amazed at how easy it is for an engineer to conceive an idea, pitch it to a few paralegals and lawyers, and get it written up to submit to the USPTO. IMHO, there's a big disconnect between the engineering minds that actually come up with legitimate patentable ideas and the IP attorneys that write and file the patents.

Getting rid of software patents altogether is quite extreme. You need a mechanism in place to protect the property rights of individuals and corporations. When there's absolutely no sense of preservation of property - whether it be tangible or intangible - innovation and risk taking are going to suffer.

steveklabnik9• 17 years ago

> Getting rid of software patents altogether is quite extreme.

Really? I'd think that most people in software have the opinion that there should be no software patents at all.

It's kind of silly, frankly.

maxwell• 17 years ago

> You need a mechanism in place to protect the property rights of individuals and corporations.

Trademarks. Copyrights.

philwelch3• 17 years ago

Software is (uniquely?) protected two ways--the source code and object code are both protected by copyright, and the algorithms may be protected by patent. One form of protection should be sufficient.

Arguably, software is also protected by trade secret, either because it's difficult to decompile object code into anything meaningful or because it's hosted and run on a server that no one else is allowed to see.

cma• 17 years ago

Why not just fund general research like we already do, but more so?

kiba2• 17 years ago

This is based on your assumption that a patent system will actually result in more inventions, than it would otherwise without its existence. It is also based on the assumption that novel inventions necessary mean it should be protected in the market place because of its presumed usefulness. It also mean that you believe an invention can be judged objectivity to be obvious or not.

You also forget the enormous difficulty for reforming the patent system to the economic benefits of the masses due to regulatory capture by special interest. If you want to reform the system, you have to reform the overlying political system that allow such regulatory capture in the first place.

Secondary, I would like to direct your attention to a book called Against Intellectual Monopoly by two economists, Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, who explains the evidence for why patent and copyright monopolies shouldn't exists in the first place.

discojesus• 17 years ago

awesome things like making it illegal to sell Word and therefore Office

How about just making your open source alternative to Word and Office that much better and competing with them?

* edit: downmodded without justification. Wonderful. Which just forces the quality of discussion on HN WAY down. Ironically, understanding that concept requires understanding incentives, which are the basis of patents in the first place :)

philwelch3• 17 years ago

I downmodded you because you demonstrated a total misunderstanding of cookiecaper's point, quoted him out of context, and made a totally irrelevant response. He wasn't making any kind of attack or criticism against Microsoft Word or Office, he was arguing that this kind of disruptive litigation will provide an impetus to lobby against software patents.

ericb• 17 years ago

The problem with your just simply build your own open source competitor theory, aside from being a glib response, is that you are quite likely to be violating a patent Microsoft or someone else holds when you build said system.

Complaining about downvoting is itself noise, which will generally only get you downvoted further.

ghshephard3• 17 years ago

discojesus - the ENTIRE point of patenting "Office/Excel/Spreashdeet/Word" processes and systems is to PREVENT open source alternatives to Word and Office.

We're talking about _patents_, not copyrights here. Nobody is suggesting that Software Copyrights aren't perfectly valid and an important part of the industry - without even having to Poll, I'm going to guess that 90% of HN residents are strong proponents of Software Copyrights. The Free-Software proponents, even those on the GPL V3 bandwagon, _rely_ on Copyrights to further their aims and ambitions.

noonespecial2• 17 years ago

Would it be possible (and IANAL so I've got no idea) to simply not make your products available in this whacked out district of east Texas?

Just refuse to ship by mail or retail to any address in the district in order to make sure the trolls can't force you into this venue?

It would be no small measure of poetic justice if in return for making themselves an enormous public nuisance and doing irreparable harm to the patent system, all of their residents had to drive a hundred miles every time they wanted an ipod.

Edit: Moved from the thread about this that didn't take off.

Edit: On downvote: I actually wasn't trying to make a snarky point etc. I really would like to know. Is it possible, if some venues just become too hostile, to simply not sell to them or is it an "anywhere in America = everywhere in America" kind of thing? In other words, is there any way at all to keep patent trolls from dragging you down to their funny little puppet court in nowhere-ville east Texas? Give me my -4, I'm cool with that, but could someone take a moment to answer?

krschultz• 17 years ago

Federal Court so afaik enforced nation wide.

dpatru• 17 years ago

The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly. --Abraham Lincoln

algorias2• 17 years ago

What about collateral damage of such enforcement?

andreyf• 17 years ago

Except this doesn't apply here in the least. Microsoft has a lot more to gain from strict patent enforcement than it has to lose. This is hardly a good reason for Microsoft to give up all of the effort they've put into their software patent portfolio.

Jach• 17 years ago

I tend to agree, but I'm also concerned that the more often patents are held up in court, the harder it's going to be to get rid of them.

I remain hopeful though that Congress will get lobbied to legislate an end to patents, and the Supreme Court is facing some very interesting cases and seem in favor of the Open crowd.

NathanKP3• 17 years ago

The Yahoo news item is rather trite. Is there a link to a better story with more information about the patent that was infringed upon?

Edit: Nevermind, someone else already posted a better link. I propose that the item link should be updated though.

houseabsolute• 17 years ago

"Rather trite" is rather trite.

og1• 17 years ago

I don't understand how much of anything dealing with XML can fall within the "non-obviousness" requirement of a patent. Who fills these juries for the trial? From the view of the general public I think the majority of things dealing with computers would be considered "non-obvious, and would therefore be worthless. Why aren't these decisions being made by professional peers?

grellas• 17 years ago

This is a classic forum shopping case brought by a Canadian company against an international company headquartered in Seattle, with neither company having any connection whatever with the venue (Eastern District of Texas) other than that MS Word happens to be sold there.

This particular district is famous for being wildly receptive to patent claims and is therefore used routinely by patent trolls searching for large verdicts and, indeed, a $240M verdict (plus add-on items totaling $50M), plus a permanent injunction, is a pretty big prize for "custom XML" technology that constitutes a very minor part of Word's functionality.

Not that there isn't a form of justice in Microsoft being bitten by patent abuses when it has benefited for years from patent abuses that it has heaped upon others.

ars• 17 years ago

Previous discussion on this, with more details http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=757504

chrischen• 17 years ago

So what did Microsoft do? Violate a patent for a "program which let's users type and format text"?

pvg• 17 years ago

Patent in question -

http://www.google.com/patents?id=y8UkAAAAEBAJ&dq=5787449

sev• 17 years ago

Google's acquisition of DocVerse is starting to make more and more sense.

bioweek2• 17 years ago

Why is MSFT stock up for the day and for the week? Shouldn't this majorly affect their revenue?

nostrademons• 17 years ago

The stock is supposed to reflect the discounted value of all future cash flows. In the grand scheme of Microsoft's Infinite Revenue Machine, having Word off the market for a month or so while they figure out a workaround really doesn't make much of a dent.

bioweek2• 17 years ago

So no one is worried it will be off the market permanently? I thought investors were prone to panic?

riferguson• 17 years ago

I have absolutely no opinion about the validity of this particular patent, but I want to forestall a bunch of random griping.

Please, please don't post commentary that involves "just reading the patent" and thinking (a) you know what it means, or (b) saying that it's "obvious" from a cursory glance.

All patents need to be interpreted in light of their "file history", which is the correspondence between the Patent Office and the filer during the patent examination. It is literally true that the words in the text may not mean what you think they do.

It is not uncommon for patent claims to be completely changed by the file history, which in complex cases can comprise thousands of pages of back and forth; if you pay the copying costs you can get the patent office to send you the file for any particular patent.

If a patent has been litigated, you may be able to figure out what the court and the original patent examiner thought the patent meant by reading the lawsuit filings and judgement, but just looking at the patent by itself is not necessarily going to help you understand the details.

[IANAL, but I've been to the rodeo before.]

coffeemug• 17 years ago

Meanwhile, the judge's decision was written in Microsoft Word (do lawyers still use Word Perfect?) May be Microsoft should stop selling Windows and Office in a couple of these jurisdictions. For serious document processing there still is no good alternative to Microsoft Office. I have a feeling that if this were to happen, the public would be losing a lot more than Microsoft itself.

jrockway4• 17 years ago

OO.org Writer is adequate for 90% of Word's users.

I wrote a book a few years ago, and the editors used Word. Corresponding with them by using OO.org was not too difficult; all the features were there, although not completely polished. I looked at the features I thought were unpolished a few years ago again recently (I am not a big word processor fan), and they are fine now. OO.org Writer is now basically Word without Exchange integration.

Eliezer• 17 years ago

OO.org Writer will be adequate as soon as they come out with a decent Outline view. Until then, I and a whole whack of other people are staying on XP rather than Ubuntu primarily because OO.org lacks this one feature!

http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3959

wayne• 17 years ago

Microsoft's plan is to remove the feature from Office: http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2009/dec09/12-22sta...

10ren2• 17 years ago

Oral argument for the Bilski appeal was heard last month - perhaps something will come of that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilski

Personally, I think patent law needs a massive overhaul; but I also think that the lone inventor should be protected - or why would anyone bother doing deep useful work? We would then only get the deep work (of academics) and the user-driven hill-climbing (of open source/big corporations).

I guess startups like Appjet (etherpad) are an exception... but, according to their early webpage, they had a software patent. Which Google may have wanted when it acquired them. I expect that Dropbox, which also has some cool proprietary technology, also sought to patent it, given pg's position http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html

While a startup can protect itself by growing and innovating fast, I have a soft spot for the deep technical innovator. I appreciate those incremental hill-climbing innovations; the cool stuff in the labs that never actually becomes usable; and the clever identification of markets and exploitation thereof. But the revolutionary stuff is what I love.

I'm always surprised that so many developers, who I would think are creative types, don't think deep innovation deserves the encouragement and reward of protection.

Note that Xerox PARC was funded by patents (on xerography); and Bell Labs' origin can be traced to a patent (on telephony).

manish• 17 years ago

"Microsoft has said that it and the public will both suffer if Word goes off the market while the company devises a workaround."

I am touched by Microsoft's concern for public.

10ren2• 17 years ago

Some insightful comments on slashdot (browsing at 5): http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/12/22/1936214/Microsoft-Ord...

drawkbox• 17 years ago

Sad thing about this is there is some developers at Microsoft right now working on this, for as many possible hours per day all through the holiday just to fix and remove the features. They couldn't have waited until January 4th to drop this?

dangrossman• 17 years ago

Office/Word won't drop off store shelves for any period of time. In the months since this case was initially filed and the injunction granted, Microsoft rewrote the small bit of Word code the company claims infringes to no longer use that method. They reprinted the Office CDs, repackaged and are shipping out new copies to be on shelves before the day the injunction ends.

Court: Microsoft violated patent; can't sell Word

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