A patent troll has convinced a judge in patent troll friendly East Texas that Microsoft Office has "unlawfully infringed" on a patent that describes how programs go about "manipulating a document's content and architecture separately."It is based around an XML related patednt which means that MS cannot sell Word that saves documents in .XML, .DOCX, or .DOCM formats that contain custom XML in the US.
The ruling comes into effect in 60 days time. After that time MS are also prohibited Microsoft from providing
technical support for infringing products sold after the injunction
takes effect, or from "testing, demonstrating, or marketing the ability
of the infringing and future Word products to open an XML file containing custom XML."
The judge also required that MS pay $240 million in damages to the patent trolls, plus court costs and interest.