Office Banned: Microsoft Fined

As the concern about piracy is at its peak, this shows that a big company like MICROSOFT is also on the piracy list. They are just doing it for money. There business starts with the money for the money and ends with the money. If the big company's like MICROSOFT can stole others product, than pirates will be pleased to hear about it. MICROSOFT stole(Pirated) Canadian Company's Technology which is a big slap for the people saying or backing about copy-righted products. If they cannot stop well known big company's like MICROSOFT or the big company's like MICROSOFT are involved in the piracy case than how they stop other pirates?



Microsoft has been slapped with yet another patent infringement fine recently for willfully including a Canadian company's technology in its Word 2003 and Word 2007 programs. The dispute centers on how the custom XML tagging features of these applications, which are used for encoding and displaying information, infringed on a patent from Toronto-based i4i.

The software giant must now pay $200 million in damages – though they are expected to appeal this decision. A Microsoft representative said the company was “disappointed” by the verdict, adding that the i4i patent is invalid, and would seek to have it reversed. This is the second time in two months that Microsoft has been found guilty of violating smaller firms’ patents. Back in April, the company was ordered to pay $388 million in damages for infringing a patent held by anti-piracy software maker Uniloc – which they are also appealing.


Last month's unsuccessful appeal forced Microsoft to remove infringing XML technology from Word 2007, and the company said it would offer modified versions of Office 2007 software by January 11 -- yesterday.

Unfortunately, Redmond has not met that deadline and boxed versions of the productivity suite are currently unavailable through the company's online store -- though, some down-loadable copies are present. Among the offered digital editions are Office 2007 Home and Student, Professional, and Ultimate for Windows.





According to Computer world, Microsoft says Office will be available "soon after Jan. 11." In the meantime, various copies of the Office 2007 software can be found online. While those probably contain the "unkosher" XML feature, it was noted last month that existing copies of Office 2007 would remain unaffected.