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.

Comments

Quick...

[shrykk]

Someone go patent .txt files!

Re:Quick...

[eggnet]

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.

Microsoft has never used a patent offensively

[ObviousGuy]

They are typically the target of dubious patent lawsuits, actually.

If anything, I'd imagine that this was more defensive than anything else.

Re:Microsoft has never used a patent offensively

[Anonymous Coward]

But...but... its MICROSOFT. And this... this is SLASHDOT.

Re:Microsoft has never used a patent offensively

[gcaseye6677]

What will they do with all of those patents years from now when they have lost, or are about to lose, their monopoly on the desktop after some powerful new competitor emerges? Introducing Microsoft's newest division, MSSource!

Re:Microsoft has never used a patent offensively

[MrRTFM]

That's not the point. All the big companies are safe from each others patent suits because each of them use technology from the others patents portfolio's.

The problem is that if they wanted to, they really could crush all new and small companies like a bug.

I can only really see 3 outcomes:
1. Software Patents become irrelevant and therefore useless (HA!)
2. The big companies keep newcomers out with lawsuits
3. They keep collecting patents but never use them, and small companies live in fear that at any stage they can be crushed.

Its so ridiculous its almost funny.

Re:Microsoft has never used a patent offensively

[mr_infiniti]

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/

My eyes must be old..

[Anonymous Coward]

I first read the headline as "Microsoft Receives XML Patent".... oh shit that was the headline.

bait and switch

[conteXXt]

and they sneak a patent though while we all look for the source code.

And look how modest they are

[vicparedes]

a Microsoft spokesman was quick to deny that they'd be so bold as to patent XML itself

I feel much better now.

not a patent of XML

[Pr0xY]

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..

the text of the /. headline is a bit misleading.

proxy

Re:not a patent of XML

[UNFAIRMAN]

You are right to compare their XML claims to what we all do with HTML.

Let's pick their abstract apart:

"Systems, methods and data structures" - yadda yadda yadda
"for encompassing scripts" - a way of storing a script program
"written in one or more scripting languages" - let's say JavaScript and VBScript
"in a single file." - Such as within an html file

"The scripts of a computer system" - as we said, JavaScript and VBScript
"are organized into a single file " - as we said, an html file
"using Extensible Language Markup (XML)." - Ok, xml instead of html - but don't forget xml and html are both specific subsets of sml. We'll continue with the html analogy

"Each script is delimited by a file element" - Give each script a unique internal name
"and the script's instructions" - The JavaScript or VBScript code
"are delimited by a code element within each file element." - The code tag goes inside the script name tag. This is similar to a <param> tag inside an <object> in html. This is a case where xml is cleaner than html, and one of many reasons the world is moving to xml. But we'll continue with the html analogy for now anyway.

"Other information" - attributes
"such as a name of the script" - in html this might be implemented as <script type="text/javascript" name="somename">. In reality, each JavaScript function has its own name, and a programmer refers to the code by the functions.
"and a functional description of the script may also be included in the file" - same as the last snipit, where you might have script type="text/javascript" description="This is a description">. Typically html programmers just put this into comments and documentation.
"using other XML elements to delimit that information." - As stated above, xml is better because of its ability to create tags. But I'm going to continue dragging the html example along.

"The language in which a particular script is written is also included within the XML format." - Similar to the type attribute in <script type="text/javascript"> or the old language attribute in <script language="javascript">

"When a particular script is executed," - When a user browses to a page with JavaScript, or runs in some other shell
"the file is parsed" - yeah, I hope so
"to create a list of the script names" - similar to function names, albeit with some encapsulation
"or of the functional descriptions of the scripts." - Its always nice to have a more human-readable version, especially if users are going to see program names.

"One or more scripts are selected" - On an html page, some JavaScript scripts may run when the page is loaded, others when a form is validated
"and the code for those scripts is extracted from the file" - read the script into memory into some blob text object
"and executed" - interpreted and run the script
"by the appropriate scripting process." JavaScript is done by a JavaScript interpreter, VBScript by a VBScript interpreter, etc.

"The scripting process that executes a particular script" - The JavaScript or VBScript interpreter
"is identified from the scripting extension attribute" - Is identified by the "type" attribute as seen in <script type="text/javascript">"
"that is included in the XML format of the file." - Yeah, this analogy uses html, and we're all slowly moving to an xml world.

In summary: We're all moving to xml for many obvious reasons, and Microsoft has patented one of them. We've all been adding multiple scripts to our html files for years, and there have been pain points. One promise of xml is to have more easily parsed data and meta-data due to the ability to define tags and the use of hierarchical tags instead of a fixed list of attributes. Every html file I've ever written falls into this classification where xml is desired, and this includes my javascript code. We've all been doing this for years within html.

What Microsoft has patented is an obvious extension of current industry practices to anyone skilled in the art, and the patent should not have been granted.

Piano Teachers Unite!

[joelparker]

Can piano teachers please patent C# asap?

unimaginable consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

Next thing you know, someone'll patent the "A method for gas exchange by alternate inductions of overpressure and underpressure", aka "breathing".

By your definition, it sounds as though the development and innovations that would make farting possible would be impeded, since there would be prior art.

Re:Prior Art..?

[cujo_1111]

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.

Re:Microsoft to Patent 1s, 0s

[rsborg]

In what CEO Bill Gates called "an unfortunate but necessary step to protect our intellectual property from theft and exploitation by competitors," the Microsoft Corporation patented the numbers one and zero Monday.

Give credit where credit is due, coward!

Prior Art?

[robbyjo]

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?

Re:Prior Art..?

[gcaseye6677]

Microsoft knows better than to try to patent XML itself. That would not stand up even with the U.S. patent office in its current state. Instead, they will patent many aspects and possible uses of XML so there will be no practical method to use XML in a meaningful way without infringing a Microsoft patent.

From The Onion

[Osty]

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.

What's actually being patented

[vruba]

From skimming the patent, it looks like they're patenting something vaguely like this:

<versions>
<version language='perl' interpreter='/usr/bin/perl'>
print("I am a banana!\n");
</version>
<version language='python' interpreter='/usr/bin/python'>
print 'I am a banana!'
</version>
</versions>

... in other words, using XML to keep several languages' versions of one script.

I don't really see the point. There are plenty of extremely portable languages, and what happens if the versions in the XML file fall out of synch? If someone edits the perl version but not the python version, you could be in trouble. Writing a non-trivial algorithm that works exactly the same in two completely different languages (if they weren't completely different, you wouldn't need to drag them both around) seems like more work than just using a portable language in the first place. I suppose it could be useful for keeping scripts across incompatible language versions -- you could have one script for $language v1 though v2.5, and one for all later versions.

Still, if I were using XML to make my code portable, I'd use Flare or something very much like it. Maybe I'm missing the point, but I think this patent is pretty weird.

Re:Maybe so, still trivial...

[Jester99]

Any competent programmer could come up with a method for doing the same thing in a few hours.

I already do it! HTML is XML compliant, no? Well, in my HTML documents, I have this tendency to put these little tags, like, <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JAVASCRIPT"> (some code in *gasp* the JavaScript scripting language...) </SCRIPT>

And though I don't personally use it, I have seen
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT"> (some code in *gasp* the VBScript scripting language...) </SCRIPT>

Isn't that what they just described in this patent? *scratches head*

Re:You mean Db

[kfg]

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

Patent renewals in the United States

[tepples]

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.

Re:why

[TomV]

It looks at first sight like it's about WSF files (Windows Script Files, for the Windows Script Host). Early versions of WSH didn't use XML, just raw script in a text file (.vbs, .js), but from WSH2, WSF files look like the following example from the MSDN Library:

[quote]
Since one scripting language may not have all the functionality you need, Windows Script Host allows you to combine multiple languages in a single .wsf file. The following example shows a .wsf file that includes both VBScript and PerlScript code:

<job id="PERLandVBS">
<script language="PerlScript">
sub PerlHello {
my $str = @_[0];
$WScript->Echo($str);
}
</script>

<script language="VBScript">
WScript.Echo "Hello from VBScript"
PerlHello "Hello from PERLScript"
</script>
</job>
[/quote]

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.