MSFT Hoped Word 11 Would Render i4i "Obsolete"

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Status
Not open for further replies.
Traditional Microsoft tactics. Copy and Destroy. We're talking pre-buy_out_all_your_competitors here. This is Microsoft's bread and butter business strategy we're talking about.

Although, with all the blacklash they've gotten from the EU recently (and to a lesser extent, the meaningless anti-trust decision from the U.S. government years ago), you'd think they'd be less blatant about it.
 
Willful infringement? That changes things. A reasonable payout to i4i for its losses is fine, but exhorbitant amounts for "special damages" will just raise prices for everyone. Rather than paying obscene damages, the Microsoft executives guilty of planning and carrying out the willful infringement need to go to jail, or stand before a firing squad. GAME OVER.
 
I've been posting about this for days since the whole story broke. People were slamming on i4i about being a patent troll and greedy for the $200 million court win. But they were only asking for $25 million and a jury made it $200 million after hearing a lot of evidence that MS willfully infringed on the patent and would not even talk to i4i about licensing while knowing they should be.
 
The bigger problem here is when the judge put the permanent injunction in place barring the sale of Word products, that also applies to any products which Word is included, specifically Office 2007. That is going to be a serious problem for Microsoft, if they are unable to reverse the decision. LOL
 
How many Microsoft employees does it take to screw a lightbulb?

None. They would just make lightbulbs obsolete with their own newer versions.

>.
 
I4I got 300million that they didnt deserve. Thats like Pantening the
copy and paste feature or the find feature excat same thing , 300 million is WAY overboard for a little shit company
 
[citation][nom]masop[/nom]The bigger problem here is when the judge put the permanent injunction in place barring the sale of Word products, that also applies to any products which Word is included, specifically Office 2007. That is going to be a serious problem for Microsoft, if they are unable to reverse the decision. LOL[/citation]
That is going to be a serious problem for North America.

I sure don't feel like implementing some other form of office into our environment... Not to mention the training involved because almost everyone uses some form of office.

We have local office on laptops/Desktops and it is also installed on our Citrix environment 🙁
 
[citation][nom]grieve[/nom]That is going to be a serious problem for North America.I sure don't feel like implementing some other form of office into our environment... Not to mention the training involved because almost everyone uses some form of office.We have local office on laptops/Desktops and it is also installed on our Citrix environment[/citation]

u do know that this only affects Office 2007/2008 only right?
 
This is like the 3rd time Microsoft has been sued/punished this month. If i was Microsoft, i would pull all my software/OS/updates for 1 month and screw over the world. Then when we realize how all major companies and businesses are dependent on Microsoft, people wont try these stunts.
 
Unless contradicted by other verbiage, the passages of the patent that i've seen quoted strongly imply that this claim could be interpreted to include HTML using CSS, among other things.
 
@thepetey

So what, we are supposed to just let MS do whatever they want because a lot of people use their stuff? So if someone is big in an certain area of software they can take anything from lesser companies at will? Like its some kind of public service.

Ok, so what you are saying is that Oracle can just take SQL server code from MS since they are smaller. Google can just take the code for Bing because it's tiny in the market. Adobe can just take what they want from Silverlight. There are a lot of areas that MS is a small player or even complete loser, like A/V, Money comes to mind, and many more. So it would apply to them as well.
 
MS increase prices due to this infringement, will only make those less aware, more aware of why they have increased the prices. About 90% of the consumer market dont have a clue how bad MS is, so this will help to open their eyes.

With that in mind, and the fact that open source based or other forms of word software can be had alot cheaper, it will make them more likely to use/purchase open source based software.

Its a loose loose situation for M$, and considering they got caught red handed avoiding the best outcome, ie paying i4i and working something out, I think i4i deserve every cent of this fine.
 
http://www.google.com/patents?id=y8...rce=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false

They patented a method of mapping the normally "in-line" formatting so it sits outside the actual text. Does MS even do this? I can't see the benefit of using a system like this. You still have to edit both the content AND the formatting at the same time, contrary to the claims of the patent, if you edit the text without editing the map all of your formatting will be offset.
 
evidence of willful infringement... they didn't think the patent was invalid or that they could invalidate it at some future time... so even if i4i's patent is a blatant abuse of the system, it doesn't matter because microsoft tried to play dirty instead of going through the appropriate channels... too bad so sad... pay up and move on and hope they will still license the IP or that your 'word 11' product really doesn't infringe on or uses a method that does make i4i's IP 'obsolete'
 
I am not a programmer so allot of it is a mystery to me when I read it. But I had a couple of programmers explain it to me at work a couple days ago when the story first started hitting all the tech sites. I have also done extensive search's about the case and background of the company i4i.

Over the last couple of days I have found allot of blog posts and stories about it, with quite a few "experts" breaking the patent down and analyzing it. I've seen commenters posting about XML, HTML, CSS, LaTex, OpenDoc and probably a dozen more formats and I've also seen explanations on why they don't apply and won't invalidate this patent.

Also in personal opinion, I really have to wonder why MS with all its money and resources was not able to produce any prior art or attempt to disprove the patent in all the time since all this started when Word 2003 was released. Even after a $200+ million judgement, there appears to be not move on their part to do so officially buy challenging it with the patent office. All they have done is say there were disappointed in the judgement and basically asked the open source community to do something about their problem before it effects them too.
 
I like the patent though. Its basically applying to you making any changes to a word document. They patented the ability to edit your documents.

Gotta love the patents. I think I will patent the ability to edit by hand and pen, a paper.
 
[citation][nom]thepetey[/nom]This is like the 3rd time Microsoft has been sued/punished this month. If i was Microsoft, i would pull all my software/OS/updates for 1 month and screw over the world. Then when we realize how all major companies and businesses are dependent on Microsoft, people wont try these stunts.[/citation]
Not having read or fully understood the patent in question, I've been avoiding commenting on this - but it is responses like this that make me do a major double-take.

If I understand the logic of these types of posts, some people are arguing we are so dependent on Microsoft products in our daily lives that they should be able to dictate law and policy by withholding their product until the US government (and businesses) cave into their demands? Would this not be an ideal test for a monopoly? In which case, if they broke up Ma Bell then maybe they need to shatter Microsoft to not only protect the consumer but in the interest of national security.

However, this logic has helped convince me that Open Source is vital to the health of our nation's IT services...
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom