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Microsoft Receives XML Patent
gsfprez writes "Well, i'm no patent lawyer, but if I'm reading this right, it seems that the basics of XML are being patented by Microsoft. If not the files themselves - at least what most of us would do with XML files. From the abstract: 'Systems, methods and data structures for encompassing scripts written in one or more scripting languages in a single file.' That smacks of what my config files do on my G5 for my G5, if you read it with a biased eye." We noted this was happening earlier, and now it's finally come to pass. While the patent does sound a bit dubious, a Microsoft spokesman was quick to deny that they'd be so bold as to patent XML itself.
this seems more like a patent for embedding a script within XML, which is IMHO fair enough. Read the patent carefully, it is describing using XML in a specific way, not XML itself..
/. headline is a bit misleading.
the text of the
proxy
Wouldn't VIM config files constitute prior art?
They can be written in VIM script, perl, python, and ruby al lin one file.
What about html and php?
If you read the patent text, you will find it is not a patent on XML itself. It is a patent on the method of encompassing multiple scripts inside an XML file. The scripts can be all written in the same language or different languages.
I think this may be used to change the way ASP works. It will allow you to use C# and javascript in one file and depending on the system configuration, it selects the correct script to run.
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
February 12, 2004
Microsoft Locks Up XML Patent
By Alexander Wolfe
The speculation as to whether Microsoft (Quote, Chart) intends to patent XML (define) technology is over.
Microsoft has been granted United States patent 6,687,897 for "XML script automation."
The patent, awarded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on February 3, appears to deal with basic XML functionality. Specifically, it describes a method for unpacking multiple scripts contained within a single XML file.
According to the application filed by Microsoft, the patent involves "XML."
"The scripts of a computer system are organized into a single file using Extensible Language Markup (XML)," Microsoft's patent document continues.
The document explained that each script is delimited by a file element and the script's instructions are delimited by a code element within each file element. When a file is opened, the elements are loaded in RAM as needed.
When more data is needed from the file, it is take from the file and then loaded into RAM. This will ensure that the fastest data transfer rate can be achieved.
Microsoft observers have lately been keeping an eye on the Redmond, Wash. software company to see whether or not it intends to add its own proprietary technology to the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) XML standard.
Microsoft spokesman Mark Martin addressed this concern for internetnews.com.
"Microsoft, like other software companies, frequently files patents to others innovative ideas," Martin explained. "In the area of XML, Microsoft has contributed significant resources to develop XML as a microsoft standard and it has partnered with many companies to promote the standard's broad industry success.
"While the XML standard itself is royalty free, nothing precludes a company from seeking patent protection for a specific software implementation that incorporates elements of XML. This does change the royalty-free nature of the XML standard itself."
The just-awarded U.S. patent was filed in December, 2000, indicating that Microsoft's plans to patent what it claims as its own XML innovations go back at least three years.
HTML is a direct subset of SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language). XML is derived from SGML.
Give credit where credit is due, coward!
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this seems more like a patent for embedding a script within XML, which is IMHO fair enough.
Can we say Ant anyone? In a way, Ant is also a script, albeit it's geared towards installation. Or did I miss something?
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
About a century ago, the US supreme court ruled
that the tomato is a vegatable.
Please properly credit your source. That article is from The Onion, circa 1998. The site you reference says it got the article from www.cars.com, which may be true, but it doesn't say exactly where on cars.com so the link could be followed to eventually find the real author.
Looks like there is a vacancy in the Patent Office... Are you qualified?
Link HERE
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What MS has been granted a patent on is a specific implementation technique using XML to describe the scripting, language, style, and selection criteria.
Claims 1 and 2 have been done hundreds of times by different programs, most of the time with a flat file or configuration database. The remaining claims are probably specific enough that they may stand up to prior art claims, although Telecordia licenses an application that uses at least some of those claims. Cisco has a variety of applications that provide this sort of scripting interface, and although they used a raima db in the past they have promised xml configuration soon.
From the summary of the patent:
I'm seeing a conflict of interest with client-side web scripting, particularly Javascript and VBScript. Strangely enough, later on they even reference Javascript:
Looks suspiciously like <script language="Javascript"> to me.
On the other hand, there's a lot of talk about "CDATA" in the patent. From what I grok, the patent is specific about using CDATA elements to encapsulate scripting languages. The listed example makes sure to encapsulate all the executable code within <!CDATA> tags
You are incorrect. E# exists, as does B#, and any singer or violinist can produce them.
You are violating the intellectual property of J.S.Bach. His lawyers shall contact you anon.
How is your temper?
KFG
- Patents are composed of an abstract, a list of "claims," and supporting information.
- The abstract is not an adequate or reliable description the patent. The first sign of willful ignorance is when a person such as the submitter of this story quotes from the abstract as though it means something.
- The list of claims and supporting information defines the coverage of the patent precisely.
- Every one of the claims must be implemented for a system to be covered by the patent.
- READ THE LAST POINT AGAIN.
- Thus, every additional claim limits, rather than expands, the scope of the patent.
- If a competitor constructs a system that implements all but one of the claims, it is not an infringement.
- READ THE LAST POINT AGAIN.
What can you conclude? A patent which mentions XML in passing while describing a complicated system, is not patenting any aspect of XML. Rather, it is patenting the system as a whole, which is an application of XML along with other mechanisms.A competitor could build an equivalent system which does not use XML, or a slightly different system which does use XML, and it would not be an infringement.
Either this is a non-story, or it is woefully misdirected. I'd be more concerned that Microsoft is trying to patent the idea of "choosing a script from a menu" than that their implementation uses XML.
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
The best analogy I can think of appeared when carbon fiber became popular back in the 1990s and began to be used in all sorts of things. By this reasoning, someone could have patented carbon fiber for all sorts of uses: golf clubs, shovel, axe and hoe handles... the list is long. In each of those cases, no one could market such a product without paying royalties.
Whether Microsoft uses this patent for good or ill, it seems to be yet another illustration that the examiners at the USPTO are blittering idiots.
--Mike Perry, Inkling Books http://www.inklingbooks.com/
It's an extension of WinFS (or I assume that's what it's for?). Basically, it's a way to associate meta data with a script without having filesystem support for it.
.zip file, complete with descriptions.
:)
So, you want to run a script, you do tabbed completion, it gives you a list of scripts and a description of each one. You select it and it is pulled out of the XML repository and run.
Useful? I would think that metadata in the FS would be a better way to go about it, but I would love an easy way to browse the scripts on my system. New? I've never seen it before. Obvious? Probably?
On a local system, this is like being able to use winzip to execute scripts inside of the
Patenting XML? Nope, not even close.
The example should make it pretty obvious... Can't include it here, cause slashdot removes the tags.
Jason Pollock
You have to admit that the idea to control lowercase and uppercase with a single bit has it's advantages. In one operation you can test both 'a' and 'A'. ASCII makes you use test on both and use addition and subtraction instead of the more computer friendly bit flips.
What makes you think that isn't true for ASCII? In ASCII a-z and A-Z are continuous and in-order with "A" starting at 65 and "a" at 97. That's a separation of 32, which makes them differ by a single bit.
Here's one that runs in: ANSI COBOL, ISO Pascal, ANSI Fortran, ANSI C (lint free), Postscript, Shell script, 8086 machine language.
But if I understand correctly, they are patenting the idea of storing a collection of code in an XML file.
Given XML, that's so obvious that it's already been done by several different groups, independantly. And MS is the only one that didn't think the idea was too obvious to patent.
It was also common practice. (Not best practice, as good supporting tools aren't yet widely available, but not uncommon, either.)
It also has as prior art:
1) Stored procedures in a database
2) Some FORTH dialects which don't compile ahead of time.
3) Is there a Smalltalk that's like this? I think so.
4) A wide variety of code libraries, including web pages that allow one to access code via html lookups. (HTML being very close to XML)
5) Hasn't anyone ever done something like this with SMTP or Docbook? Or Tex? Doesn't SMTP includes XML as a subset?
6) It's an awful lot like the way an Apple II BASIC Interpreter calls a subroutine.
I suppose it depends on exactly what they are claiming, and I guess the only way to find that out is to wait for them to sue someone.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Eh? It does?
Last year the the Patent Office granted a patent for ecommerce over the Internet. The patent holder, an attorney, I believe, then proceeded with a systematic campaign to sue small businesses that hawk their wares over the Internet. He would "settle" with these businesses for a $5,000 licensing fee, which is substantially lower than the legal fees to chanllenge his patent. He didn't try to sue Amazon.com, who would surely have challenged and invalidated his patent claim. Pretty slimey business, but unfortunately, very legal. The problem is that the Patent Office is so clueless about the patent applications put before them and seems to put little thought about the implications of the patents.
The initial checkins for Apache Ant are in January 2000.
o rg /apache/tools/ant/Main.java
http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/ant/src/main/
Jim
select i in list edit quit
do
case $i in
list) list.sh
find) find.sh
quit) break;
esac
done
1. In a computer system that includes one or more scripts that can be selected for execution by a user, a method for facilitating the identification and selection of the one or more scripts for execution, the method comprising the acts of:
incorporating the one or more scripts into a file, wherein the file is formatted in such a manner as to enable the one or more scripts to be associated with different scripting languages;
presenting a list of scripts to a user for selection, wherein the list includes an identifier for each of the one or more scripts, the identifier comprising a descriptive name and functional description of each corresponding script; and
upon receiving a user selection of a particular identifier that is associated with a script from the list, executing the script that is associated with the particular identifier.
I think that a patent can be "renewed" once
"Renewal" on patents is different from "renewal" on pre-1978 copyrights. In the United States, patents last 3.5 years after they are granted; patents whose owners pay periodic maintenance fees are renewed to 7.5 years after grant, then 11.5 years after grant, then a maximum of 20 years after filing. Foreign patents may last up to a year longer because a U.S. inventor has one year to file for a foreign patent after having filed in the United States, and other countries' 20-year terms are counted from that.
Besides, can you convert a single hex digit to EBCDIC as easily as ASCII?
add al, 090h
daa
adc al, 040h
daa
XML, which is a subset of SGML, was conceived about 1996 and became a W3C standard on Feb. 10, 1998. No one owns the exclusive rights to XML. It is licence-free and platform independant (doesn't sound like M$, does it?) For reasons too off-topic to get into here, suffice to say, there are different schema dialects of XML. The W3C XML Schema Working Group received a dialect submission from M$ in January, 1998, even before XML 1.0 was complete: XML-Data schema language and XDR (the XML Data-Reduced Schema), a subset of the W3C's final recommendation. Needless to say, M$ (and some others) products offer full support for XDR. There are other dialects and schemas of XML as well, such as the well known DTD, XSD, XPath, XLink, XPointer, XSL, SAX, XSLT, etc. and surely others I will offend someone by failing to mention. So to answer your question, M$ cannot patent XML - no way - but they certainly do have prior art to XML-data and XDR. This isn't a big deal because there is no neccessity in using these schema; XML is a great, open-ended language with lots of alternatives - heck, invent your own! Some references: http://www.w3.org/XML/ http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/NOTE-XML-data-0105/
Sorry for replying to my own post...
From the DMCA - rebuts my premise directly.
"2. Reverse engineering (section 1201(f)).
This exception permits circumvention, and the development of technological means for such circumvention, by a person who has lawfully obtained a right to use a copy of a computer program for the sole purpose of identifying and
analyzing elements of the program necessary to achieve interoperability with other programs, to the extent that such acts are permitted under
copyright law."
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. Jon Krakauer
Using XML to delimit script fragments in a variety of languages may or may not be particularly original; it seems to me that this is what the patent's about, rather than (shock, horror, page impressions, revenue) the whole of XML per se.
It's a press release. Please supply a list of companies that MS has sued, threatened or otherwise been offensive towards because of their patent on the FAT filesystem.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
for what its worth - i submitted the headline as
.500 on my /. submissions.. (11 of 19)
"Microsoft Patents 'XML Scripting'"
which is 100% factually correct.
why the fsck Cowboy neal changed it to something which was NOT correct is beyond fscking me.
i specifically DIDN"T call it "Microsoft Recieves Patent on XML" or anything else that might resemble that because that is not what happened and i would look like a dumbass.
i just got home from an interview - over beers - so it took a while. And this is what i get home to?
remember this, the next time you read a dumb-ass subject line. It may not have been the fault of the submitter.
in any case - i shouldn't bitch too much... i'm batting better than
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
You're not alone.
Donate free food here
"OpenOffice would then presumeably be unable (from the legal perspective) to read and write "Microsoft" XML files."
I think the reverse engineering clause in the DMCA would protect this sort of behavior. Mind you, I'm not trying to portray the DMCA in anything resembling a rose-colored light, but I don't *think* the example you cited would be problematic.
I've actually had the opportunity to discuss this sort of thing (or something very similar) with an attorney who's a client of my company. Basically, his verdict on the matter was in concurrence with my interpretation of the law. This is (at best) third-hand legal advice however, and should probably be taken with a larger amount of salt than even ordinary Slashdot posts ;).
Sig: Seeking partnerships with web design firms.
There is no chance that this patent can stand. I make my tax euros exactly that way. I published first implementations of that mechanism around '93 (using SGML of course, there was no XML; LaTeX, Lout, roff and other scripts where mixed). I'm even doing this to implement distributed operating system. I'm using that to proof intrusion resistance, incorruptibility and non-deniability.
Some looser has wasted some $ for patent fees.
former examiner here...
Eh, inventor here. The fellow that makes his employers rich.
If an independent claim is not allowable, all claims depending on it are rejected as well; however, it is best to additionally reject each dependent claims on some other grounds tied specifically to the matter of said dependent claims.
The list of claims in the original application is basically a wish list, and when the examiner rejects you in the first go-around you just narrow the claims to get around his objections. If your first application is approved you didn't ask for enough.
What is the old saying? A patent is the residual of the fraud by the inventor and his attorney that went undetected by the examiner.?
What happens afterwards is that the dependent claims provide you with backup in case the broader independent claim(s) are knocked out in court.