Surprising no one, Microsoft has filed an appeal of their loss in the i4i patent case. They were found to be infringing a patent on formatting documents using a separate XML file with markup instructions.
They use this technology in Word's DOCx file format.
In papers filed late last week, Microsoft lawyers claim lower courts are using an incorrect standard for the proof of prior art ... [ read the full article ]
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I dont think they are going to win, it's amazing enough the Supreme Court is even willing to hear them out. They knew their chances were slim tho going this far.
"This is key to the company's defense, they say, because the proof of prior art, in the form of source code written by an i4i developer prior to joining the company, has been destroyed. In fact it was written for a program called S4, which the i4i developer worked on for his previous employer."
So they are trying to get someone else (the previous employer) to sue Microsoft?
You also have to take into consideration that there is a time limit on this case. The company that sued MS would have to have done it inside a very narrow time set after the supposed violation was found. In the original case it clearly states that it was over five years after the "violation" was found before the case was originally filed. The judgement against MS can be tossed on that alone as the time limit is 3 years not 5, for them to sue.
I would bet MS wins this case as with all the people using MS Word, the damage to the business community for them not being able to use MS Word wold be incalculable. And no judge i their right mind is going to go down in history as the judge that may have caused hundreds of trillions of dollars in losses as well as millions of jobs world wide.
