Office applications Toolkit

Story: Microsoft ordered to stop selling Word

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That ain't roses ya'll smelling!

I read the patent. Not only is the judge in the case an idiot, the patent office examiner is one as well.

The description reads like they are patenting a cross between style sheets, Postscript, Wordstar and practically any XML editor ever programmed. i4i made a "trolling motor". I'm somewhat surprised they didn't go after OpenOffice and Sun Microsystems, I guess Sun didn't have enough cash to interest them.

What's really annoying is that by the patent's design, if you make a program that scans ANY file and records a string of formatting attributes into another file, you've violated the patent. On the surface, its a stupid concept. Not only do you have to keep track of your text file but also the "meta-tag" file. What happens if the metatag file gets damaged? Duh? All your work gets trashed.

I do not like Microsoft, and most of the regulars here know that. I especially hate Office 2007, but I think Microsoft ought to push back hard on this one. Its a really bad patent and it should have been squashed at the initial filing.

i4i cite tons of previous art as a means of excluding those applications from consideration as prior art. What they did though was ignore the use and application of templates in those same applications which practically any word processor will use to set formatting, fonts, font size, physical layout, etcetera. All of that is within the scope of the patent as "meta-tags". Yeah Bubba, we got your meta-tags, your formatting tags, your big and little font tags, what ever you want, we got dibs on it all.

WordPerfect for instance has a $900 package used by lawyers all across the country that is essentially thousands of boilerplate templates for legal documents. It would be incredibly ironic if their initial lawsuit filing was done using one or a few of those templates.

Why did i4i, a Canadian company, have to go all the way to Tyler TX to file suit? Because the i4i attorneys in the Dallas office know the judge in Tyler would rule their way. They shopped around for a compliant judge and then filed in his district court. They can do that since Microsoft gets sold everywhere in the country. Tyler's famous and usual exports are beautiful roses of every description by the millions. Now we can add at least one idiotic IP judgement to the list.

No rosebud Bubba, just thorns.

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