The US District Court of Eastern Texas has granted an injunction to prevent Microsoft from selling copies of Word because it infringes a patent owned by another company.

The long-running court case was brought by Canadian software firm i4i which won $200m in damages from Microsoft when a jury found it had willfully infringed a patent relating to XML custom formatting.

Until that point Microsoft is banned from selling or importing into the US any Word products which can open .XML, .DOCX, or DOCM files containing custom XML.

Microsoft has 60 days to comply with the injunction, according to this release from lawyers McCool Smith.

i4i, based in Toronto, Canada, owns U.S. Patent No. 5,787,449. The original $200m payment was considered by the court to be a reasonable royalty.

We're still waiting to hear back from Microsoft UK but US reports suggest an appeal is under consideration. ®

Related stories

• Word nemesis: Microsoft deliberately 'destroyed' our business (9 September 2009)
• Troll blockers take Microsoft SGI patents (8 September 2009)
• Microsoft can still sell Word (4 September 2009)
• Updated Dell and HP sing Microsoft tune on Word injunction (27 August 2009)
• Versata saps $139m out of SAP (27 August 2009)
• Microsoft's Word patent case to hit appeal court next month (24 August 2009)
• Microsoft goes Darwinian with evolutionary tree patent (21 August 2009)
• Microsoft warns of 'irreparable harm' on court's Word injunction (19 August 2009)
• Comment Microsoft at a loss in Word patent case? (13 August 2009)
• Microsoft secures web Office XML patent (7 August 2009)
• Microsoft 'update' breaks Office for Mac (31 July 2009)
• MS adds sandboxing to Office 2010 (24 July 2009)
• Google Docs to get 'shiny new' interface (17 July 2009)
• Microsoft's Flash-challenger Silverlight 3 hits web (9 July 2009)
• Microsoft talks turkey in Brussels (8 July 2009)