They'll do like they did with the EU monopoly, ignore it and pay later
if they have to.  They won't halt shipments of office, one of their
biggest cash cows, any fines will be well worth keeping the publicity
down of halting sales, disruption to business sales, or any general sign
of weakness in the face of their competition.  The plaintiff appears to
be yet another patent troll filing out of east Texas, so I fully
anticipate Microsoft will either assimilate them (for their patent), or
give some kind of *favorable* license term as they do anyone doing this
to them.  Ultimately it's just a payoff for them to stfu, which is
exactly what the troll wants.

They give away cash to use their search engines to even the average
consumers, hefty settlements are likewise nothing when your pockets run
that deep.

I'm more curious if they'll show fangs at sun/oracle for openoffice, or
any of the other lesser products still out there making office products
with xml compatibility.  Microsoft recently won another patent for xml
storage of text data, only theirs was 6 months prior to the one this
company is browbeating them with.  Both sounded roughly the same, but
together I'm sure they'll just be used as saber-rattling fodder against
open-source competition.

-mb


On Thu, 2009-08-13 at 12:10 -0700, Jason Spatafore wrote:
> This one has me confused. How does MS fight such a ban of sale of their
> product?
> 
> http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/enterpriseapps/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=219200383&cid=nl_IW_daily_txt
> 
> I just got back on the list...it's good to be back. :) 
> 
> Jason
> 
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