- Saturday, 21 November 2009
- INQ Mobile
- RSS
I still need the reassurance of a familiar brand before it's a real story - Tony Maddox, CNN senior VP
Microsoft pleads for a stay of execution
REACTING TO ITS stinging defeat a week ago in a patent infringement lawsuit brought by the Canadian software house i4i over Custom XML processing, Microsoft immediately filed an Emergency Motion last Friday.
Now the redacted, nonconfidential version of the Vole's Emergency Motion to Stay Permanent Injunction Pending Appeal (PDF) has tipped up, and it makes for interesting reading.
As we reported yesterday, on 11 August Judge Leonard Davis of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas handed down a Final Judgment for monetary damages, along with a Permanent Injunction barring Microsoft from selling current and future versions of Microsoft Word as of 10 October.
Microsoft and i4i have agreed to dispense with the need for Microsoft post a bond against the monetary damages award pending appeal. However the Vole very much wants to get a stay of the permanent injunction against selling Word while it appeals. That's what it begs for in this Emergency Motion.
Microsoft argues four main points in its motion. It predicts that it is likely to win on appeal, complains that it and its business partners will suffer "irreparable harm" if it doesn't get a stay, argues that i4i won't suffer any irreparable harm, and maintains that a stay will be in the public interest.
Of course Microsoft claims that Judge Davis made numerous errors of law during the course of the trial and in his written opinion, judgment and injunction, so it maintains it's an odds-on favourite to win its appeal. For an appellant, the trial judge was at least mistaken if not an outright idiot, so Microsoft has to say this.
The Vole also whinges that being barred from selling new copies of Word for some months will cause it irredeemable harm. This is quite a bit farther fetched. Since Microsoft takes in a lot of its revenue from server and client licenses, its Windows operating system sales are roughly about the same size as its Office sales, and Word is just one of several components of Office, this will be hard to support. If Microsoft's revenues were to fall by 10 or 15 per cent for a year, would that constitute "irreparable harm" to the Vole?
Microsoft's third argument, that i4i won't be irreparably harmed by staying the injunction, is simply disingenuous. Plaintiff i4i's business has been devastated by Microsoft's inclusion of Custom XML processing within Word, so here the Vole is in effect arguing that it has already gravely wounded its victim, so continuing damage can't possibly hurt it much further.
Finally, Microsoft claims that "public interest favors a stay." This seems like an hysterical plea that the sky might fall if people can't keep buying Word. As though there aren't several good file-compatible alternative word processing software applications available, not least OpenOffice.org as well as a few other Open Document Format (ODF) word processing applications. Plaintiff i4i may get around to mentioning this.
Plaintiff i4i and Microsoft will argue this motion before the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, probably some time next month. If the appellate court rules against the Vole on this motion, it will have to stop selling Microsoft Word by 10 October. µ
L'Inq
Groklaw
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
Egan - you obviously must've earned your legal bona fides from watching Law and Order on the tele?
I loathe MSFT's anti-competitive practices as much as the next guy, but offering up such a one-sided, absurdly ignorant, "summary" of the case at bar is disingenuous in the very least... you've obviously been spending too much time with the likes of Charlie D.
OK. I am not going to argue the merits of the case. I am not a lawyer. I will however point out what I consider to be a ridiculous statement on your part.
You say that MS Office and OS sales are roughly the same. You say that Word is "just one of several" components of the Office suite. I will concede both of those points. However, who buys a productivity suite with no Word processing functionality? Answer? Nobody. They can't realistically sell Office without Word. It is the backbone of the Office suite. Without it you can't even do a proper Mail Merge in Outlook. Hell, Outlook's default text editor is Word. So unable to sell Word = 50% of their sales being gone. Let me take 1/2 your salary away and see if you feel it is harmless.
i4i is just one of lots of other companys stepped on by the vole. But things are changing. First they tried to incorporate java, they lost. Then they lost the browser fight in EU recently. Now, they will face a stay in their second biggest source of revenue. Finally!
PS: Of course you can't sell office without Word, duh!!!
Maybe if companies are unable to buy Microsoft Word they will see that there are alternatives that are much better, in the end saving them money on Microsoft's over priced office suite.
I have been an OpenOffice.org user since 2004, and I am a bit of a fan of Word Perfect.
I think, however, there may be a slight possibility that Microsft will, at least temporarily, replace Word in Microsoft office with a feature-enhanced version of Works...
I can see it now... after implementing MS Works, and people using its format for a while then freaking out because Word doesn't know what the heck to do with a Works document (by default, there is an add-on, but the average user, in my experiences, is unaware of it).
Everybody knows that Microsoft with the help of their head lawyer, spearheaded copyright laws on software. Now it is found that they are, like many freelance programmers b4 that ended persecuted under their [Microsoft] enforced copyright viewpoints are having to face the very same laws.
I looked upon programming as a nice job but that was long ago. It's not feasible any more, because any work you would produce will have to be scrutinized by the law? A job like that would tantamount to a lottery for who gets to eat at the soup kitchen.
A $500 Billion fine plus royalties for all sales should be a wake-up call to the criminals at Microsucks who continue to violate laws worldwide. Suspend all sales until Microsucks pays up.
Can you afford to risk your business on proprietary software that may be in violation of any number of patents?
Can you risk having all your computers shut down remotely while your single point of failure supplier is investigated or after they're found guilty?
Don't risk it!
Switch to free software like freeBSD or GNU+Linux today and rest easy.
Billy boy and his friends have done this to many many many people and companies.
I hope they get a little taste of their own medicine!
The hell with M$ and their bad practices.