August 27th, 2009
Dell joins in on Microsoft's appeal of Word injunction
Dell and HP have chimed into Microsoft’s plea to stay injunction of future sales of Word. Microsoft lost a patent battle with Toronto-based i4i, and in August a federal judge banned Microsoft from selling future versions of the software. Here’s part of what Dell said (HP just signed on), courtesy of PC Mag. Interestingly, much of the filing was redacted, where information included how the injunction would materially affect Dell and Dell’s ability to comply with the injunction.
The District Court’s injunction of Microsoft Word will have an impact far beyond Microsoft. Microsoft Word is ubiquitous among word processing software and is included on [redacted] computers sold by Dell.
If Microsoft is required to ship a revised version of Word in Dell’s computers, a change would need to be made to Dell’s images,” Dell wrote. “Making such a change would require extensive time- and resource- consuming testing.
Dell also made a public interest argument that the injunction would hurt the PC-using public at large. If the appeal is not granted, Dell asked for a 120-day stay. Oh, and Dell actually took pains to mention that the brief was written in Microsoft Word.
GrokLaw has generally anti-Microsoft sentiments on the case.
