The federal appeals court has confirmed an American decision of the trial at first instance ("The sale of Microsoft Word banned in the U.S.).Microsoft has infringed the patent i4i and must, in addition to paying 250 million dollars, remove Word of the market.

Limiting the court to Word

The ruling will not affect the copies already sold the patent and that the court recognized only covers the algorithms used to read and write files. XML. DOCX or. COMC in Word. Contrary to what one could hear the company never attempted to patent XML and users of OpenOffice. Org can be assured that no complaint will be filed against the publisher of their software.

A misjudgment on the part of Microsoft

Microsoft plans to make an appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court and announced the meantime, it will remove this feature of Word versions sold after January 11, 2010 and that Office 2010 does not integrate. The response from Microsoft has the advantage of surprise. He believes, indeed, that the patented feature is too used to be interesting. However, if the code i4i was as insignificant as this, why he fought so long to succeed instead of removing the feature earlier and pay a sum far less important to a small firm in Toronto hiring 30 employees?