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Microsoft lost in translation

Candace Lombardi
In a software-driven world, it's easy to forget about the nuts and bolts. Whether it's cars, robots, personal gadgetry or industrial machines, Candace Lombardi examines the moving parts that keep our world rotating. A journalist who divides her time between the United States and the United Kingdom, Lombardi has written about technology for the sites of The New York Times, CNET, USA Today, MSN, ZDNet, Silicon.com, and GameSpot. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET.
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Candace Lombardi

A recent court ruling involving a patent infringement case may force Microsoft to temporarily halt sales of Microsoft Office in South Korea, according to a report from the Korean Times.

In 1997 and 1998, Professor Lee Keung-hae of Hankuk Aviation University filed patents for technology used to automatically translate English into Korean within Microsoft Office applications. The Supreme Court of Korea has ruled that those Korean patents are effective.

Acknowledgement of the patents' validity could affect the pending civil lawsuit being brought against Microsoft by Seoul, South Korea-based P&IB, which purchased the rights to the patents. The next determination will be whether Microsoft infringed on the patents in question. That matter has not yet been ruled on.

"The courts in Korea have not yet considered all of our strong challenges to the validity of the patent, and our defense of non-infringement is still being considered in a separate proceeding. We do not currently anticipate any interruption to our ability to continue offering Microsoft Office in Korea," Microsoft spokesman Matt Pilla said in a statement.