It seems that Microsoft knew all along that they were going to get hit like a drum by i4i when the Canadian company won its XML patent lawsuit

Microsoft has attempted to block the court-ordered end to sales of Microsoft Word over a patent dispute. But court papers show that company officers were aware of the patent when they took the infringing action.

A U.S. federal appeals court has upheld a $290-million US judgment against Microsoft Corp. in a patent case launched by Toronto-based i4i Inc., and issued an injunction that will prevent the sale of its popular Word software.

Microsoft was issued a permanent injunction against selling Microsoft Word products due to a patent infringement dispute with a Canadian company called i4i.

"Brussels, 12 May 2009 -- The European Commission is pushing for software patents via a centralised trusted patent court that would be created with the United Patent Litigation System (UPLS), an international treaty that would remove national courts. This court system would be shielded against any review by the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

There has been so much talk in the last two weeks that Microsoft has changed with regard to its patent policy toward Free Software. We fool ourselves if we trust any of the window-dressing that Microsoft has put forward to convince us that we can trust them in this regard.

So, apparently Microsoft isn't allowed to use the docx format. Another company has patent on using XML for documents. Wonderful. I would love to be rejoicing in Microsoft's ailings... but I'm not. That's a friggin' rediculous patent.

The core of US Patent 7,571,169 which Microsoft was granted on August 4th refers to – "A word-processing document stored in a single XML file that may be manipulated by applications that understand XML".

In response to criticism from some involved with OOXML, Microsoft is adding Office binary formats to a list of technologies that are protected from patent violation claims