So here’s the deal on Microsoft Word being yanked from shelves by January 11, 2010.

i4i, a database company back east that developed the first XML plugin for Microsoft Word claimed that Microsoft infringed upon their patent(s) regarding how XML is used and parsed in Office Documents, specifically Word (.doc) documents. i4i actually updated the USPTO database to work with Word 2000 and specifically developed an algorithm on how applications read and write custom XML.

In case you haven’t noticed, when you save a file in MS Office 2007 or greater, it saves it with an extension like “docx”. If you attempt to open this file with another application other than Office, you will actually open a zip file of xml files instead of “one file”. What Microsoft did was change the file type so that there is the actual “data” or text in the file, and an XML file to describe to Office how to present it. It is almost the same relationship CSS has to XHTML.

Essentially Microsoft took i4i’s method of applying XML to files and tried to make it their own….sound familiar?? In May a Texas jury found Microsoft: …willfully infringed on the patent and on Tuesday, December 22, a Federal appeals court upheld the patent ruling that Microsoft stop selling its Word program and pay i4i $290 Million for violating a patent.