Microsoft gets to keep selling Word... for now

After receiving a court order to stop selling Microsoft Word due to patent-infringing technology, Microsoft warned that the consequences could be dire if the injunction wasn't stayed. And by dire, I mean, Microsoft might have had to pull Word for a few months while writing new code to get around the problem.

Fortunately (for Microsoft at least, and anyone looking to pick up a copy of Office or Word in the next few months), it won't come to that. Today an appeals court stayed the injunction issued by a federal judge in Texas last month.

That doesn't mean that Microsoft is in the clear. It just means that the company can continue selling its software while the appeals process continues. If Microsoft ultimately loses the case, it's possible the company could still have to pull Word from the market indefinitely. But I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft has a team of monkeys banging away at typewriters to come up with a less patent-infringing version of Word as we speak. That's how software is made, right?

Tags: injunction, iwi, lawsuit, microsoft-office, microsoft-word, patent, xml