Office Patents, EU Dispute, and Other Legal News

To avoid claims stemming from Microsoft’s loss of a patent-infringement case, Office 2003 customers with Access 2003 should apply the latest Office service pack (Office 2003 SP2) to new installations, and Office XP customers with Access 2002 should apply a patch to Access on all new installations. However, installations that were completed before Jan. 2006 are not affected, Microsoft says.

In other legal news, Microsoft could face daily fines of up to €2 million (approximately US$2.4 million) for failing to release adequate documentation about server protocols in a timely fashion, has won two patent battles while facing another one, and has settled a dispute with Google over former employee Kai-Fu Lee.

Office Patent Fallout

In June 2005, Microsoft lost a patent infringement case against Guatemalan inventor Carlos Amado regarding a feature that allows data from an Access database to be displayed in an Excel spreadsheet. In Jan. 2006, Microsoft sent an e-mail to volume licensing customers explaining which products are affected and what customers should do to comply with the legal ruling. If customers who receive the notification do not take these actions, they will technically be in violation of their licensing agreements and will not be covered by Microsoft’s indemnification policy, which covers legal costs associated with patent-infringement and other intellectual property cases involving Microsoft software. Patent infringement lawsuits against end users of an infringing product are rare, but not unprecedented.