Court orders Microsoft to stop selling Word

Seattle, Dec 23: A US federal appeals court has ordered software giant Microsoft to stop selling Microsoft Word 2007 and other Office 2007 products by Jan 11, 2010.

This judgment came on Tuesday, Dec 22 when Microsoft lost an an appeal in a patent dispute with Canadian company i4i.

The court which found that Microsoft was infringing on a patent in its flagship product Word relating to the use of XML or extensible markup language, also slapped a fine of 290 million dollars on the company.

Microsoft has lost the case against the Canadian XML specialists i4i way back in May 2009 but the injunction against further Word sales was put on hold pending the results of this appeal.

Later in Aug 2009, Microsoft was asked to stop selling Word in its current form in America as it infringes upon a patent owned by i4i.

The Tuesday, Dec 22 ruling came in an appeal by Microsoft against the Aug 2009 verdict by Texas jury.

The patent infringement case was filed by i4i in 2007.

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