A judge recently ordered Microsoft to stop selling Word, one of their flagship products. Microsoft is guilty of infringing i4i’s patent on XML software.

In May, Microsoft, was ordered to pay 200 million dollars.  Then on August 18, Microsoft was again ordered to pay an additional 40 million for willful infringement along with 37 million in prejudgment interest.

Microsoft is being given 2 months to stop selling their office software.  But I doubt Microsoft will let this all go down without a fight.

They will probably

• Appeal (obviously)
• Issue a patch and remove infringed code off new editions (which I think is much easier then stopping sales altogether)
• Settle for some ridiculously high fee that won’t be disclosed to the public
• Hire some more lawyers!

via cnet