The link for the video, in case it doesn’t show up, is here.
UPDATE: Microsoft Appeals Word Patent-Injunction Case – WSJ.com.
As well they should.
Watch for the case to get argued before and decided by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which holds exclusive jurisdiction over patent cases.
The district judge’s ruling does seem to me to be a bit overbearing: Microsoft can’t sell Word because a part of it infringes a patent held by a Toronto-based company called i4i. 14i now has a permanent injunction against Microsoft granted earlier this month.
Your Honor, wouldn’t an enforced license and a hefty money judgment have done the job without threatening the software base of thousands if not millions of companies worldwide who rely on Microsoft Office products to get their own work done?
Don’t get me wrong here: I in no way approve of or endorse Microsoft’s aggressive patent infringing policies. However, Microsoft products are heavily used and therefore needed in the business world, and this ruling potentially disturbs many, many other businesses which are already struggling in the current economy. Requiring businesses to switch software midstream could spell collapse for many small and medium-sized businesses that simply cannot budget for the conversion from Microsoft Word to a new word processing system when the time comes to upgrade (for you know that Microsoft will sue in patent anyone who puts any code that in any way resembles its code for reading Word documents into word processing software…).
And the wheels on the bus go round and round…