Thread: Proprietary patents stop MS word

  1. #1
    spurious conceit MK27's Avatar
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    Proprietary patents stop MS word

    Just listening to the news and had to "LOL" after our discussion last week.

    The software giant has lost another round in the courts and they have been told to stop selling Microsoft Office and Microsoft Word in the market from January 11.
    source: i4i lawsuit: Microsoft again stopped from selling MS Word

    This is good. It means even more people can "put bread on the table" thanks to proprietary software, such as a very large gang of lawyers. Also, it might hopefully make the ".doc is good food" issue moot.

    I guess sometimes you get exactly what you ask for
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    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
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    I don't see how this is good since that probably means more lost jobs.

    But there is more to the article:
    ...
    The company is now working hard to ship an update that would provide a workaround in the conflicting editions of MS Word.
    ...

    Which insenuates that not all editions/versions of MS Word are affected.

  3. #3
    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    I've been sort of following it. Not a biggie.
    In increasing order if importance:

    -1. Microsoft claims it affects only a small portion of the product and they can change it to remove the patented code, issuing new versions of the suit.

    0. It doesn't affect the XML specification in any way. Just the algorithms used to read it. So, this has no impact on any ODF aspirations.

    1. Office 2010 doesn't include the patented algorithms.

    2. Climbing one ladder higher in the judicial system appealing to an higher instance is a possibility, which will further delay the action suit and give Office 2010 more time to displace Office 2007.

    3. A settlement is still a possibility and i4i lawyers never dismissed that possibility.
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  4. #4
    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
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    Yeah I heard about it on NPR. It only effects MS-Word. The rest of MS-Office is unaffected, they only have to stop selling the current version of Office as it contains Word. It probably won't even mean that, since now they will just have to actually pay the patent holders for their patents. Unfortunately for MS, patent violations don't just go away because you replace the product. The very act of selling the product created tangeable harm as it competed with legitimate versions of the algorithm and products that used it. The damage is done.
    Last edited by abachler; 12-22-2009 at 10:00 PM.

  5. #5
    train spotter
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    Another copyright/patent claim settled in Texas....

    US$97 per copy of Word seems excessive for a small addon (not that MS should be able to take others work for free).
    "Man alone suffers so excruciatingly in the world that he was compelled to invent laughter."
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  6. #6
    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by novacain View Post
    Another copyright/patent claim settled in Texas....

    US$97 per copy of Word seems excessive for a small addon (not that MS should be able to take others work for free).
    The settlements are based on the greater value of the product infringed upon and the value of the infringing application. So if the relevant code was part of a $15,000 piece of software, $97 doesn't seem excessive at all. It is also common for courts to award treble damages to discourage frivolous infringement. If getting caught shoplifting only meant you had to buy the item, there would be no incentive to actually purchase anything, as you could just try to steal it, and if you got caught, the 'penalty' would be to pay for it the same as if you hadn't tried to steal it. As you are surely going to occasionally get away with stealing it, it is economically advantageous to infringe. But if getting caught meant you had to pay 3 times the value of the item you tried to steal, it deincentivises infringement.

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