Court rejects Microsoft appeal, bans Word sales

A federal appeals court today ordered Microsoft to stop selling its popular Word software in less than three weeks, rejecting the company's appeal and confirming the ruling of a lower court.

Microsoft will comply with the injunction, a company spokesman said today. "We are moving quickly to comply with the injunction, which takes effect on January 11, 2010," said Kevin Kutz, the director of public affairs for Microsoft, in an e-mail.

The decision by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit follows a late-September hearing before a panel of three judges, during which Microsoft argued that a jury verdict earlier this year should be overturned or a retrial should be ordered. It also asked that an injunction ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Leonard Davis be struck.

The case has attracted interest primarily because of that injunction, which originally was to bar Microsoft from selling Word as of Oct. 10, 2009. That injunction, however, was suspended after Microsoft threatened that sales chaos would result, and several major computer makers, including Hewlett-Packard and Dell, stepped forward to say the same.

According to Microsoft, it would take five months to modify Word, and the company wouldn't be able to sell Word 2007, and the Office 2007 suite that includes the word processor, during that time.

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