Earlier this year Canada's i4i won a US$200 million patent infringement case against Microsoft on how Microsoft Word uses custom XML documents. Now Microsoft needs to pay i4i about US$290 million and stop selling the infringement versions of Microsoft Word by January 2010. Presumably, that also means the revised Word 2007 Microsoft must produce by Jan. 11, 2010 if it wants to continue selling Word, and the lucrative Office 2007 franchise that includes Word."We are going to look extremely carefully at all Microsoft products," Loudon stated.
On Tuesday, a federal court rejected Microsoft's appeal and confirmed the ruling of a lower court that said the software giant owed i4i $290 million in damages and interest for infringing the Toronto based firm's XML editing technology.
Although it appears Microsoft is moving forward with a technical fix to the problem, rather than license i4i's Custom XML technology. Loudon said, "i4i is, even now, willing to talk to its legal rival about a licensing deal." We're always open to talking to anyone reasonably, said Loudon. "We'll talk with Microsoft if they're reasonable."
