Microsoft
A U.S. appeals court yesterday put on hold an order imposed last month that would have limited the software makers ability to offer some features in Word. The order wont take effect until an appeal of the underlying patent case is resolved. Oral arguments on the appeal are scheduled for Sept. 23 in Washington.
Closely held I4i LP of Canada won a $200 million verdict, since increased to $290 million, on a claim that Word uses its patented invention related to customizing extensible markup language, or XML, a way of encoding data to exchange information among programs.
“We are happy with the result and look forward to presenting our arguments on the main issues on Sept. 23,” Kevin Kutz, a Microsoft spokesman, said in a statement.
Microsoft was under an Oct. 10 deadline to “to redesign its flagship Word software to remove an obscure functionality,” or be “compelled to stop distributing Word and the popular Office software suite,” Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft has said in court papers.
In granting the request to put the order on hold, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington said it was acting “without prejudicing the ultimate determination of this case.”
Word is part of Microsofts Office software, which is used by more than 500 million people.
The case is I4i LP v. Microsoft Corp., 2009-1504, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Washington). The lower court case is I4i LP v. Microsoft Corp., 07cv113, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas (Tyler).