Judge rules Microsoft to pay a fine and bans the release of XML opening products

Microsoft Corp was ordered by a US federal court to pay over 290 million in damages to Canadian software firm i4i Ltd for infringing a patent. i4i, which is based in Toronto, is privately held maker of software for manipulating documents. In a 2007 suit it claimed that Microsoft deliberately abused one of its patents in its Word processing application and its Vista operating system.

The final ruling of a judge from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas follows the previous verdict that was issued in favor of i4i on May 20. Apart from the fine the judgment also prohibits Microsoft from selling any products that can open a .XML, .DOCX or .DOCM file containing custom XML.

"i4i will do its utmost to support custom XML users, which is particularly important to implement the ISO 29500 OOXML standard," Michel Vulpe, i4i's founder and an inventor of the patent, said in a statement.