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Tokyo court orders popular word processor off market

The Tokyo District Court has suspended the production and sale of a word processing program that is the only serious competitor in Japan to Microsoft Word. The court also called for existing stocks of the program, called Ichitaro, to be destroyed. Justsystem, which develops the software, said it plans to appeal.

The court ruling came in a patent dispute brought by Matsushita Electric Industrial against Justsystem. The suit involved Ichitaro and a graphics program called Hanako that is also sold by Justsystem, according to Matsushita.

The dispute centered on the way that a help function works in the Ichitaro and Hanako software. The way the software presents information violates Matsushita patent number 2,803,236, which was registered with the Japanese patent office in 1998, according to Matsushita.