Microsoft has begun offering what appears to be a patch for its popular Word software, allowing it to comply with a recent court ruling which has banned the software giant from selling copyright infringing versions of the word processing product.

In a statement last week, Microsoft’s director of public affairs, Kevin Kutz, said the firm had been preparing for the injunction decision handed down by the US Court of Appeals.

“With respect to Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Office 2007, we have been preparing for this possibility since the District Court issued its injunction in August 2009 and have put the wheels in motion to remove this little-used feature from these products,” he explained.

Kutz said he expected to have copies of the software with the offending features removed available for sale by the injunction date, 11 January.

Now it appears that the patch is available on Microsoft’s OEM Partner Center Website, under the heading – “2007 Microsoft Office Supplement Release (October 2009)”.

“After this patch is installed, Word will no longer read the Custom XML elements contained within DOCX, DOCM, or XML files,” read the explanatory notes.