- Saturday, 28 November 2009
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A man is known by his friends, the devil is known by his fiends
Microsoft Word sales will continue
SOFTWARE ALCHEMIST Microsoft is breathing a sigh of relief after a US appeals court overturned an injuction that would have prevented it from selling Microsoft Word from next month.
A US District Court had ruled that the Vole violated a patent on Custom XML held by Canadian outfit i4i. It told the Vole to stop selling the infringing software, Microsoft Word 2003 and 2007, at least until its appeal of the case could be decided.
But Microsoft has convinced the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to grant a stay of the lower court's permanent injunction against continuing to sell Microsoft Word.
The court must have been impressed by the Volish briefs along with letters from its partners Dell and HP saying they would be well and truly screwed if the injunction was not stayed.
The appeal's court ruled that Microsoft had met the requirements necessary for the stay to be granted. It will hear arguments in the case on 23 September.
In addition to the injunction, the trial court ordered Microsoft to pay $290 million in damages to i4i, which the Vole is also appealing. µ
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I love how when ever Nick writes about Apple it is all flames and BS but when it is about MS he actually reports, like this article.
That's not a surprise.
How would we be supposed to write our documents in a world without Word?
M$ Office will be mandatory until developers of Office-wannabe products stop making Office-wannabe products and them think about an actual alternative.
While I'm no fan of MS, I'm even less a fan of someone holding a patent on custom XML.
Home of the most money wins, regardless of the merits of the case.
Now we can look forward to i4i being so screwed financially by this law suit that they go tits up, although I guess there's hope that the judgment is upheld and Microsoft gets to pay more.
Nah, I think I'd rather expect to be summoned to be the next Doctor Who than that would ever happen.
The injunction was lifted because Microsoft is taking the case seriously and is readying itself for the case, rather than just ignoring the case for as long as possible. Nothing like hitting someone where it hurts to get their attention.
As for i4i's case, I hope their patent is *not* upheld, not because I'm a fan of Office, but because the patent is so general that it could be applied to virtually any software that uses platform agnostic data formats like XML. It could even be used against HTML webpage rendering, as the architecture metadata (the HTML) and the content (images, etc.) can be manipulated separatedly.
Then again, i4i's primary beef is that Microsoft is imposing itself on i4i's traditional market--pharmaceudical companies. Perhaps there should be limits to market that a patent can be applied, such as trademarks have?
And when the giant nursing home chain Sun Healthcare Group Inc. violated their California permanent injunction in 2003 in a Sunbridge facility by killing five patients I personally witnessed by understaffing and with broken equipment, the Dept of Justice instead pursued the employees of an Encinitas facility.
In 2008 Claude Vanderwold, the deputy attorney general advised my attorney Eugen Andres and I that the $2.5 Million fine levied against SUN in Sept 2005 did not includes these deaths. Why?
C O R R U P T I O N
Why didn't the Dept of Health issue even one $100,000 fine for a death?
C O R R U P T I O N
Why didn't SUN Healthcare Group Inc. pay for wrongful death for Evelyn Calvert, Richard Laga, Betty Harness or the man in Room 2-B?
C O R R U P T I O N
The board of directors of SUNH have been provided evidence in the past few weeks through their attorney Fonda & Fraser LLP Anaheim, California. It will be interesting to see if they share it with shareholders as required by law. It reveals a HUGE liability they have because I'm a witness and they did not get a confidentiality agreement signed by me in mediation. I refused to sign after my attorney threatened me for SUN's CEO, saying he'd harm me if I pursued my case to trial, because I have the evidence of two board members' willful misconduct -which should have paid us treble damages worth $3-$4 Million.
Why again?
C O R R U P T I O N
Deborah S. Calvert
Newport Beach, California
I can't wait to testify!
This is how the Calif State Attorney General's office pursued SUN Healthcare Group Inc's permanent injunction violations we reported of deaths in a Newport Beach facility -they didn't they instead picked on the hispanic employees in Encinitas!
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/California%20abuse%20case:%20employees%20targeted%20rather%20than%20facility-a0136070745