Microsoft Word's 60 Day Ultimatum

Krish Raghav — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 09:52:00 GMT

A Texas Judge has issued an injunction against Microsoft - ordering the software giant to stop all sales of Microsoft Word, that piece of software we spend most of our working time staring at.

The point of contention seems to be an alleged patent violation held by i4i, a Toronto-based document management firm. i4i claims that it holds a patent for the editing of "custom XML, " and the judgement prohibits Microsoft from "selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products" that have this capability.

Microsoft itself has been dabbling in patenting the editing of the open XML standard, so this latest incident is an i 4 an i, perhaps? </badpunnage>

XML is the markup language or behind-the-scenes director that powers all Office documents since Office 2003. The earlier binary 'DOC' gave way to the XML-based DOCX format around that time. XML allows for much more powerful document modification, though Microsoft's particular implementation of it, called OOXML, has been the center of controversies before.

The 60-day ultimatum, of course, gives plenty of time for MS to file an appeal, which it undoubtedly will. It's unlikely that this will affect the future of Word in anyway. But if it does, remember that Powerpoint is powered by a similar implementation of XML, which would mean we're all headed for a post-Powerpoint, post-apocalyptic world.

In the meantime, consider OpenOffice.

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Microsoft Word's 60 Day Ultimatum