Judge orders Microsoft to stop selling Word

A judge on Tuesday ordered Microsoft to stop selling Word, one of its premier products, in its current form due to patent infringement.

Judge Leonard Davis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued a permanent injunction that “prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML,” according to a statement released by attorneys for the plantiff, i4i.

Microsoft said it was disappointed in the ruling and that it would appeal the verdict.

“We believe the evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid,” Microsoft spokesperson Kevin Kutz said in a statement.

Toronto-based i4i sued Microsoft in March 2007 alleging that the Redmond,Wash.-based software giant violated its 1998 patent (No. 5,787,449) for a document system that eliminated the need for manually embedded formatting codes.

Micro$oft can’t seem to escape from lawsuits eh? And now they are forbidden to sell Word? Jeez…what are we supposed to use then? Alphabets?