A US court has issued an order for Microsoft to stop selling its top line Word in the United States in 60 days. This ban was made because it was found out by the court, located in Texas that this Microsoft program violated a patent that is owned by a software company named i4i Ltd. This Toronto-based company complained that Microsoft breached the U.S. patent 5,787,449 , which is a “Method and System for Manipulating the Architecture and the Content of a Document Separately from Each Other.” In particular, this is about the manner the Word application manages XML or Extensive Markup Language format.

The court ordered Microsoft to pay $290 million to i4i Ltd. in damages. Word is the Microsoft’s best-selling products, so this ban will definitely hurt the company. As soon as the ban was issued, Microsoft filed a motion in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Right at this moment Microsoft is already doing its best to fulfill the court’s ruling. There is still a way out for Microsoft. Revision of the XML format is all that’s needed to prevent the ban.