Microsoft Asks Court To Reconsider Word Ruling

Last month, the court denied Microsoft's appeal of an injunction in the case involving Toronto-based firm i4i, which last year won a $200 million court case against Microsoft pertaining to technology built into Word 2007 and Office 2007 that's used to customize XML code. That figure has since grown to $290 million in interest and fines levied by judge on the grounds of "intentional infringement."

The i4i patent describes a way to manipulate the architecture and content of a document, particularly for data representation and transformation, by removing dependency on document-encoding technology.

After last month's ruling, Microsoft said it would remove the disputed feature from new copies of Word 2007 and Office 2007 and have them ready for sale in time for the court ordered Jan. 11 deadline. Nonetheless, Microsoft has insisted all along that it's not guilty of infringement and is taking one last stab at getting the judge to see things its way.

Microsoft still has the option of taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but some industry analysts are baffled as to why Microsoft didn't settle the lawsuit or license i4i's technology months ago. Microsoft in August won a stay against a court-ordered injunction that would have forced it to halt Word sales in September, but it's hard to imagine the court would suddenly have a change of heart that would cause it to now rule in its favor.

At this point, the case looks like an example of Microsoft either being too proud or stubborn to give in, or part of a strategy to discourage firms that hoard patents, known as "patent trolls," from trying to find other patent angles from which to attack the software giant.