James Delahunty
4 Sep 2009 0:39
Microsoft Corp. has successfully managed to get the U.S. Court of Appeals to grant a stay of an injunction imposed on the Redmond software giant that would have blocked the sale of some versions of its Microsoft Word product. The court ruled that Microsoft met the requirements necessary for the stay to be granted, after the corporation requested it two weeks prior.
A federal district court Judge ruled last month that Microsoft violated a patent pertaining to Extensible Markup Language (XML) held by Canadian firm, i4i, and told the company it must stop selling the infringing software; Word 2003 and 2007. Microsoft claims Office accounts for over $3 billion in sales per year.
Had the appeals court not granted the stay, Microsoft would have had to stop selling the products in mid-October. Now the appeals court will hear arguments in the case on September 23. In addition to the injunction, the Judge had ordered Microsoft to pay $290 million in damages.
"We are happy with the result and look forward to presenting our arguments on the main issues on September 23," said Microsoft spokesman Kevin Kutz.