Yesterday, Judge Leonard Davis of the U.S. District Court in Eastern Texas issued a permanent injunction against Microsoft to stop selling Word 2003, Word 2007 and its upcoming Word 2010. The case centers on a suit filed by i4i, a Canadian document management company, against Microsoft for allegedly violating i4i's 1998 patents for handling custom XML. The judge ordered Microsoft to pay a total of US$277 million in damages.

District Courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal court system, so Microsoft is exercising its right to appeal the decision. I hope that the ruling is overturned, because this case could permanently harm XML if precedent is set by the District Court. XML is an open standard, and anything that restricts its use is harmful to the industry.

The US Patent and Trademark Office has made it more difficult to obtain software patents, but many bad patents have been issued already. I am not a lawyer and will not say that i4i has a bad patent. A higher court will ultimately decide its validity—whether that is due to an appeals court decision or the Supreme Court ruling on the Bilski case.

There should be more rigor for issuing software patents. Patents can play an important role in the economy, but bad patents are a detriment to innovation and consumers alike.