MS Files For NZ Patent On XML Word Processor Files

heretic108 writes "A patent application is currently being examined in New Zealand, which if granted, would bar anyone except Microsoft from using an XML file format for storing Word Processing documents. In contrast to copyrights, patents allow even the most elementary concepts to be patented. Apparently, nobody here is diligently watching out for such ridiculous patents, so the official deadline for submitting objections has passed. This suggests a likelihood that the patent may well be granted. I am not endeared to the thought that I might be breaking the law when I use OpenOffice.org to write documents, especially since the concept of storing docs in an XML format was certainly not thought of by Microsoft, so have written a formal complaint to my Member of Parliament. Hopefully there'll be a public outcry within New Zealand."

Comments

Bit more

[Tabercil]

Here's the webpage of the New Zealand Intellectual Property Office listing the patent application. Unfortunately, it does not appear to have online the most crucial thing we're all looking for - nitty-gritty details of the patent.

Patents vs. Copyrights

[sabNetwork]

In contrast to copyrights, patents allow even the most elementary concepts to be patented.

This is misleading or false. Copyrights do not protect concepts or ideas. A copyright protects a specific expression of an idea. Plagiarizing a copyrighted idea is completely legal.

Patents protect ideas; copyrights protect the way they are presented.

yea right

[McAddress]

Hopefully there'll be a public outcry within New Zealand."

call me a cynic, but considering that 90% of people use an OS that was copied from Apple, (Xerox) and that has since been granted numerous ridiculous patents on stuff they stole, I find it hard to believe that we will see a public outcry over this. the only peole yelling will be the one's yelling about M$'s monopoly, and no one had paid any attention to them yet, and that is unlikely to change in the future.

Re:Prior art, film at eleven

[mcdrewski42]

Interesting that patent application 20030237048 in the USA Patent Office lodged on Christmas Day 2003 is for a Word processor for freestyle editing of well-formed XML documents

Abstract
A word-processor that provides a freestyle-editing environment for editing an XML document while monitoring the XML document for well-formedness. The word processor monitors the XML document to determine if the XML document is well-formed and to automatically correct the XML document to maintain well-formedness.

Asignee Name: Microsoft Corporation.

I wonder if they are related at all?

SGML and XML editors show years of prior art

[SgtChaireBourne]

Honestly, HTML is a decent precedent for XML. Sure the structure is less ordered, and not so clearly delineated between logical/structral and layout/presentation halves. But the idea of using containing tags to structure text has been around since at least SGML in 1986.

Actually, SGML was accepted as an international standard in 1986. SGML has its origins in the 1960s, but then so does object oriented programming. GML started then and over time was modified to what became SGML which became a standard in 1986. Then concessions were made to simplify it and most importantly, IMHO, make it easier to parse by requiring documents to be "well-formed". So, editors which handle structural markup, including some web editors (e.g. Hotmetal), have actually been around since the 1960's, even if we restrict the scope to SGML/XML.

If you want commercial, yet high quality examples, look at some of the tools from ArborText, Softquad, or even Altova. If you want something from the GNU project, then look at the PSGML mode for Emacs, which I recall using already in 1995. I'm sure I'm missing many examples from the 70's and 80's.

To take other recent examples, the versions of HTML prior to XHTML are in SGML. SGML and XML are the rules for defining sets of rules (aka DTDs) like HTML. You have many choices:

• HTML 2.0 (sgml)
• HTML 3.2 (sgml)
• HTML 4.01 (sgml)
• XHTML 1.0 (XML)
• Docbook 4.x (sgml + xml)
• TEI (sgml)
• TEI-lite (sgml + xml)
• ... and so on

I expect that some TeX users could speak up as well.

Text of Claim1 of EU version

[JPMH]

It looks as though a very similar patent application has been filed in Europe, EP 1376387. Clicking on the 'Claims' button in the top line of the page reveals:

EP1376387.
Word-processing document stored in a single XML file
Applicant(s): MICROSOFT CORP (US)

Claims:

1. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable components, comprising:

a first component for reading a word-processor document stored as a single XML file;
a second component that utilizes an XSD for interpreting the word-processor document, and
a third component for performing an action on the word-processor document.

... and so on down to claim 31.

This is only a patent application, not (yet) a granted patent (in fact in the EU the patent application has only just been published, on 2 Jan this year).

From the 'priority number' (US20020187060 20020628) it looks as though the original application was for a US patent, filed some time in 2002. So that is the cut-off date for prior art.

The full paperwork file for the EPO patent application can also be viewed, at EPOline.

Did Microsoft publish prior art in MSWord 2000?

[smcv]

Word 2000 can "round-trip"* well-formed XML - they claim it's HTML, but it's actually something HTMLish in XML (basically XHTML with the wrong namespace), plus Office and Word extensions in their own namespaces for the word-processor-ish stuff. As far as I remember, Word 2000 HTML supports a pretty large subset of the features Word 2000 .doc files do.

(*: i.e. not just export like Word 97 did)