Court Tells Microsoft to Edit Word

Microsoft, the world's biggest software maker, must alter its popular Word software or stop selling the product after it lost its appeal of a $200 million patent-infringement verdict won by a Canadian company. Microsoft was given until Jan. 11 — five months from the original order issued in August — to make the change by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington. Word is part of Microsoft's Office software, used by more than 500 million people. The court today upheld a verdict which has since grown to $290 million won by closely held I4i LP of Toronto. The dispute is over a patented invention related to customizing extensible markup language, or XML, a way of encoding data to exchange information among programs. Microsoft has called it an "obscure functionality."