By Jimmy Daniels
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Microsoft has been forced to issue new versions of it Office suites, Office 2003 and Office XP, as a result of the patent dispute it was involved in with Carlos Armando Amado, because of the way their Access database product interacts with Excel. They have begun issuing emails to corporate customers who purchased Office from March 1997 until July 2003, and have been ordered to pay 8.9 million because of the patent infringement.

“It was recently decided in a court of law that certain portions of code found in Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003, Microsoft Office Access 2003, Microsoft Office XP Professional and Microsoft Access 2002 infringe a third-party patent,” Microsoft said in an e-mail to customers. “As a result, Microsoft must make available a revised version of these products with the allegedly infringing code replaced.”

Although existing customers can keep using older versions on current machines, any new installations of Office 2003 will require Service Pack 2, released by Microsoft in September. Office XP will need to be put into use with a special patch applied.

Microsoft is also recommending that customers update their existing software with the new code.

“We understand that this will create an inconvenience for a small percentage of our customers…. Source: News.com

We Say: Notice how everything seems to be an in inconvenience unless it involves some corporation losing money? So, most organizations will have to check to make sure their macros and databases all still work and then start using the new patch, I wonder how “immediate” that will be. And update their existing software, good luck. As good of a time as any for them to start pushing Office 12…