Microsoft Patenting Office XML Formats

mmurphy000 writes "News(.com)+ reports that Microsoft has filed for patents in multiple jurisdictions to control the way other applications use Office's new XML-based file formats. Musings from pundits suggest that OpenOffice.org and other applications might be blocked from interoperating with Office. This, of course on the heels of today's article on Bruce Perens' concerns over patents."

Comments

Re:Yet Again

[City_Idiot]

Not in the same way but ....... Html I'm no expert on HTML but I believe that you can add in extra things into a .html file that only IE will show and dose not conform to the Html 4 Standard I may be wrong of course MS has a history of taking standards and using their majority in the desktop OS market to alter the way the standard works a little bit, thus creating a new standard

Fish-in-a-barrel thread

[hey!]

OK folks, here's the claims from the EU patent. Go ahead and see if you can find anything orginal or non-obvious in them:

Claims of EP1376387

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.

2. The computer-readable medium of Claim 1, further comprising a validating component configured to validate the word-processor document.

3. The computer-readable medium of Claim 1, further comprising a fourth component for displaying the word-processor document.

4. The computer-readable medium of Claim 2, wherein the XSD represents a word-processor's rich formatting.

5. The computer-readable medium of Claim 4, wherein the XSD is published and is available to applications other than the word-processor.

6. The computer-readable medium of Claim 4, wherein the word-processor document includes hints to applications that understand XML.

7. The computer-readable medium of Claim 5, wherein the action may be selected from parsing, modifying, reading, and creating the word-processor document.

8. The computer-readable medium of Claim 5, wherein the action may be fully recreating the word-processor document according to a word processor's set of features.

9. The computer-readable medium of Claim 8, wherein the action may be storing an image within the word-processor document as a binary encoding.

10. The computer-readable medium of Claim 9, wherein the action may be storing template information as a binary encoding within the word-processor document.

11. A method for handling a word-processing document, comprising:

parsing the document, wherein the document is contained within a single XML file and includes all of the instructions necessary to display the document according to how a word-processor would display the document; and
interpreting the document according to an XSD.

12. The method of Claim 11, further comprising displaying the document according to the instructions contained within the single XML file.

13. The method of Claim 12, futher comprising modifying the document so as to conform with an XSD file.

14. The method of Claim 13, wherein the XSD includes definitions for all of the features incorporated within the word-processor.

15. The method of Claim 12, wherein displaying the document further comprises formatting the text according to style and properties contained within the singe XML file.

16. The method of Claim 11, further comprising extracting text from the single XML file by searching for single tag indicating that the information following the tag is text.

17. A system for creating, interpreting, and modifying a word-processor document stored as as single WPML file, comprising:

a WPML file;
a validation engine configured to validate the WPML file; and
a word processor configured to read a WPML file created in accordance with a schema.

18. The system of Claim 17, wherein the word processor is further configured to modify the WPML file in accordance with the schema.

19. The system of Claim 17, wherein the word processor is further configured to output the document to a display.

20. The system of Claim 19, wherein the schema is published and is available to applications other than the word-processor.

21. The system of Claim 19, wherein the WPML file includes hints to applications that understand XML.

22. The system of Claim 19, wherein the word processor is further configured to create a document according to the schema.

23. A computer-readable medium having a schema encoded thereon, for a word-processor markup language, the schema comprising:

a properties element;
a styles element;
a body element, wher