If you are not aware. Starting on January 11, 2010, Microsoft will be prohibited from selling one of their flagship office productivity products in the United States.
This restriction will also spill over the border to the Canadian market where it appears Microsoft can continue to sell Microsoft Word as we know it.
The Canadian market will benefit from the new versions which come out of this new restriction in the US. Microsoft Word is currently the leading office productivity suite in use today throughout the business community. i4i a software firm located in Toronto was successful in a recent lawsuit against the Redmond software giant claiming Microsoft infringed on their software patents in their Microsoft Word 2007 product. i4i claimed, and US courts agreed, that Microsoft infringed on its XML software product which Microsoft currently incorporates in their .docx document format which first appeared in Word 2007.
First, those businesses who have purchased Office 2007 or Word 2007 can continue to use the Microsoft Office product. The fine folks at Microsoft have committed to continue the support all versions of Word including 2007. Microsoft has already promised a fix which will be compliant with the court ruling against them.
Businesses in the USA and Canada have nothing to worry about and should continue to use Word. Microsoft will have a revised version of Word for sale very soon. No release date has been announced by Microsoft.
Once again, this ruling appears to have no direct impact on established users of the products. I expect Microsoft will license the technology or develop their own which will offer similar services found in Word today. Businesses need to understand their versions of Microsoft are still usable and the leading word processing software isn’t planning to go anywhere.
Have you tried Microsoft Office 2010 Beta yet? FABULOUS!
Leave a comment!
You must be logged in to post a comment.