One the biggest Information and Technology giants, Microsoft Corp, has been banned from the commercial sale of its Microsoft Word processing application, due to during the ruling in a patent infringement suit, in a U.S District Court in Eastern Texas.

The lawsuit was filed by a Toronto, Canada based firm, i4i Inc., that specializes in the field of reading XML files. According to the complaint, Microsoft had been accused of copyright violations of the XML reading protocols, as one of the world’s most widely used application Microsoft Word, has been embedded with the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or .DOCM files, that are essentially created on the platform of custom XMLs.

The ruling that has been given in the favor of the plaintiff, comes from Judge Leonard Davis and is expected to go into effect 2months from the date of the verdict. The ruling will be applicable to all versions of Microsoft Word that have been designed to open and read XML files, such as Word 2003, Word 2007 all other future releases that might have the same capabilities.

According to ruling given by Judge Davis,

“In accordance with the Court’s contemporaneously issued memorandum opinion and order in this case. Microsoft Corporation is hereby permanently enjoined from the following actions with Microsoft Word 2003, Microsoft Word 2007, and Microsoft Word products not more than colorably different from Microsoft Word 2003 or Microsoft Word 2007 (collectively “Infringing and Future Word Products”) during the term of U.S. Patent No. 5,787,449.”

Microsoft has stated that it will appeal this decision in higher courts.

Via Apple Insider.