Microsoft Word is now scheduled to be banned from sale beginning January 11, 2010. That's less than three weeks away. Good news: Microsoft has promised a fix, one which will be rolled out before the deadline arrives. Microsoft would eventually use its substantial influence to have pushed under a legal rug.
However, In August of this year, a court sided with a small Canadian company called i4i that holds a 1998 patent on the way the XML language was implemented, finding that Microsoft was in contravention of patent, may result that “Microsoft was told to license the code in question from i4i or reprogram it, or else Microsoft Word would have to be removed from sale in the market.” The ruling gave Microsoft until October of the 2010 to get its legal affairs in order, but appeals pushed that out a bit.
The Federal Court has uphold that original ruling -- plus a fat, $290 million ruling against the company -- imposing the new January 11 D-Day on the matter. Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office will both be banned from sale as of that date -- though naturally you'll still be able to use copies of Word and Office that you already own, and Microsoft will be allowed to keep supporting those copies.
Unless Microsoft ships assure technical workaround very quickly, things are going to get extremely risky in the computer world and fast. Not only will retail outlets selling shrink-wrapped copies of the software be affected, computer manufacturers (who complained loudly about this injunction when it was announced) who pack Word and Office on the computers they sell will also be seriously hit by the ruling.
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