http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/12/appellate-court-enforces-permanent-injunction-against-microsoft-word.html
Think MS will fight it, or change re: XML editing? Either way, CRAZY
As much as I enjoy setting somebody stick it to Microsoft, software patents are, by and large, retarded. And way too open to trolling.
I'm hoping that as companies like Microsoft, Apple, Dell, Sun, etc get screwed by software patents, they'll start lobbying for reform.
Microsoft is going to buy them if they can't get an injunction. (My thoughts)
I'm thinking it's more likely that the result of this will be:
a) Microsoft pays them a licensing fee to use it (kinda doubtful), or
b) Microsoft says "fuck it" and just removes/tweaks it enough that they no longer violate it
Either way, everybody loses except the lawyers :)
You know, until I heard about this I didn't even know Word had an XML editor.... ::)
http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/22/technology/microsoft_word/index.htm
Looks like iago's "B" was correct