First of all, if you read any of the hundreds of articles all around the web earlier this year you would know that this patent is not:
1. a patent on XML and the whole XML is ment to be customized so it should be invalid does not cover it.
2. is not non-specific or generic in any way, nor was it obvious back when it this company came up with it which was years before the feature was added to word.
3. a company that is just sueing because they have a patent and no real product. In fact they were for years the largest and most successful data specialist of this type there was.
The federal government gave them the largest government contract ever issued to any one company, including Microsoft, to completely overhaul the United States Patent Office using this very technology. They are also co-developer of the FDA's electronic documentation system that all drug companies and such have to use.
Right after these two things happened Microsoft "conviently" inserted the ability to interact with those agencies electronic documentation systems, which are not standard XML, into Word after entering into a collaberation partnership with i4i, getting their hands on the code and then desolving the collaberation as having no worthwhile outcome. Then turning around a short time later and releasing the code in Word.
A few months back I read at least ten articles from major developers, patent researchers, technology analsyst and so on that read the patent and explained in great detail why it was pretty much iron-clad and was not invalidated by a whole bunch of different "prior art" suggestions going all the way back to computings early days that were being tossed out there in message boards just like this one.
Through the couple years that this suit has been going on Microsoft with all its money has never been able to offer any evidence that the patent is invalid, and as of the stories a few months back had never actually offically challenged the patent with the USPO. On the other hand it was proven with emails, letters and other documentation that they knowingly violated the patent with full knowledge of their actions. So much so that a JURY, plain average people and not some judge in some patent troll friendly court, awarded them over $200m dollars when they were only asking for $25m, which is what they considered to be the liscensing fee that Microsoft should have paid for all the copies of Word it had sold in the years it was infringing.