MS Files for Broad XML/Word-processing Patent in NZ

Unloaded writes "In the New Zealand Herald, Adam Gifford has written an article blasting Microsoft for burying the New Zealand Intellectual Property Office in paperwork. One example is Patent 525484, accepted by the office and now open for objections until the end of May, which says Microsoft invented and owns the process whereby a word-processing document stored in a single XML file may be manipulated by applications that understand XML."

Comments

salmacis

[salmacis2]

Would this be the same Microsoft that is arguing for patent reform?

Re:salmacis

[svanstrom]

No, it's the other one.

Re:salmacis

[Anonymous Coward]

When the rules are there, you play by them. That's just what Microsoft is doing.

Microsoft has indicated that they want to see the rules changed, because they believe that the rules are broken. Again, as long as the rules remain unchanged, Microsoft has no choice but to play by them; it would be foolish not to.

There is nothing hyprocrital in what Microsoft is doing, so you need not use that tone.

For those of you that would like an analogy: Imagine saying "I believe that there should be no income tax." Now, while an income tax is still in place, would you spend money as if there were no income tax? Surely not. That doesn't make you a hypocrite.

Next, Image saying "I believe that the patent system is broken." Now, while the system is broken, are you going to file patents as if the rules were ideal? Surely not. That doesn't make you a hyprocite.

Re:salmacis

[fshalor]

Pattents should go through some sort of peer review process. (I'm not going to argue the details, as IANAL.) But something like what publishing takes in the scientific journal world.

It can't be expected for the pattent jockies to be able to tell what's crap or now. Heck, we can't tell in a lot of markets since we may not know anything about them.

They either have to start a peer revierw, or pay for experts.

Peer review, blind, is a very elagant solution.

Oh, great.

[mrchaotica]

So basically, MIcrosoft is trying to stop OpenOffice, AbiWord, Pages, etc. from being able to import and export Word XML files. Wonderful.

At least it's not patenting those apps from reading their own format, since they aren't single files (zips and bundles, respectively).

Re:Oh, great.

[Illume]

XML file may be manipulated by applications that understand XML

Hmmm. All we need is a generic tool that manipulates XML files but doesn't understand XML.

Re:Oh, great.

[ecotax]

Call me ignorant, but why would any company NOT want to stop competition?

In an ideal capitalist world (how's that for a contradictio in terminis) companies would only compete 'fairly', that is, on the value of the goods they provide, thus creating the greatest customer value possible.

If my company saw a(n) (legal) opportunity to stop or hinder the competition, we'd grab it with both hands and do whatever we could to exploit that opportunity.

Which is a nice example on why there is no such thing as an ideal capitalist system. Under a communist system, you (and most other people) would try to get away with working as little as possible.

I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, but I'm getting a bit tired of the whole "it's Microsoft so it must be evil" mindset.

It does indeed get tiring sometimes. But it can be frustrating to see Microsoft bullying around companies or organizations making products or technologies you'd like to see having a fairer chance on the market, instead of competing with them 'fairly' against them.

Re:Oh, great.

[golgotha007]

Richard Stallman really says it best:

When CNET News.com asked Bill Gates about software patents, he shifted the subject to "intellectual property," blurring the issue with various other laws.

Then he said anyone who won't give blanket support to all these laws is a communist. Since I'm not a communist but I have criticized software patents, I got to thinking this might be aimed at me.

When someone uses the term "intellectual property," typically he's either confused himself, or trying to confuse you. The term is used to lump together copyright law, patent law and various other laws, whose requirements and effects are entirely different. Why is Mr. Gates lumping these issues together? Let's study the differences he has chosen to obscure.

Software developers are not up in arms against copyright law, because the developer of a program holds the copyright on the program; as long as the programmers wrote the code themselves, no one else has a copyright on their code. There is no danger that strangers could have a valid case of copyright infringement against them.

Patents are a different story. Software patents don't cover programs or code; they cover ideas (methods, techniques, features, algorithms, etc.). Developing a large program entails combining thousands of ideas, and even if a few of them are new, the rest needs must have come from other software the developer has seen. If each of these ideas could be patented by someone, every large program would likely infringe hundreds of patents. Developing a large program means laying oneself open to hundreds of potential lawsuits. Software patents are menaces to software developers, and to the users, who can also be sued.

A few fortunate software developers avoid most of the danger. These are the megacorporations, which typically have thousands of patents each, and cross-license with each other. This gives them an advantage over smaller rivals not in a position to do likewise. That's why it is generally the megacorporations that lobby for software patents.

Today's Microsoft is a megacorporation with thousands of patents. Microsoft said in court that the main competition for MS Windows is "Linux," meaning the free software GNU/Linux operating system. Leaked internal documents say that Microsoft aims to use software patents to stop the development of GNU/Linux.

When Mr. Gates started hyping his solution to the problem of spam, I suspected this was a plan to use patents to grab control of the Net. Sure enough, in 2004 Microsoft asked the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) to approve a mail protocol that Microsoft was trying to patent. The license policy for the protocol was designed to forbid free software entirely. No program supporting this mail protocol could be released as free software--not under the GNU GPL (General Public License), or the MPL (Mozilla Public License), or the Apache license, or either of the BSD licenses, or any other.

The IETF rejected Microsoft's protocol, but Microsoft said it would try to convince major ISPs to use it anyway. Thanks to Mr. Gates, we now know that an open Internet with protocols anyone can implement is communism; it was set up by that famous communist agent, the U.S. Department of Defense.

With Microsoft's market clout, it can impose its choice of programming system as a de-facto standard. Microsoft has already patented some .Net implementation methods, raising the concern that millions of users have been shifted to a government-issue Microsoft monopoly.

But capitalism means monopoly; at least, Gates-style capitalism does. People who think that everyone should be free to program, free to write complex software, they are communists, says Mr. Gates. But these communists have infiltrated even the Microsoft boardroom. Here's what Bill Gates told Microsoft employees in 1991:

"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a comple

XML

[sandstorming]

There is a really really good explanation on what XML is and why it works here.

The W3C states though that:

XML was developed by an XML Working Group (originally known as the SGML Editorial Review Board) formed under the auspices of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1996. It was chaired by Jon Bosak of Sun Microsystems with the active participation of an XML Special Interest Group (previously known as the SGML Working Group) also organized by the W3C. The membership of the XML Working Group is given in an appendix. Dan Connolly served as the Working Group's contact with the W3C.

I understand that microsoft aren't claiming to have invented the technology, but it really annoys me that they are trying to patent a use, and a small extract of a software they had only a small part in developing!

Re:XML

[symbolic]

What Microsoft is attempting to do is patent one of the uses intended for XML from the very start. One of the mandates put forth by the XML working group was that XML shall support a wide variety of applications,. Given this, I'm puzzled at how anyone at Microsoft could even consider such a move. Wait....no I'm not. Just the same, if this patent is approved, something is very, very wrong.

Should be treated as fraud

[anth]

I think a lot of the problems with patents would go away if applying for a patent for something that the applicant knew had been done before, or should have known was obvious to someone in that field, was treated as fraud. That is a fine, or maybe even jail time for that applicant and senior management at that company.

I know, its not going to happen. Even if it did software patents would still be wrong.

You certainly can!

[interactive_civilian]

ehack said:

nor can one blame the policticians for being accomodating and writing the rules to benefit such a generous contributor.

Yes, you certainly can blame the politicians here. It is not their job to accomodate generous contributors. It is their job to represent the will of the people (ALL the people, not just the wealthy contributors) that they are supposed to be governing.

This "vicious circle" could be easily broken if there were politicians that actually cared about their constituents and the welfare of their city/state/country rather than caring for the almight dollar/yen/euro/etc.

Patents

[ta bu shi da yu]

It would be nice to have some non-monetary penalties apply for frivilous patents. Like, for instance, if a patent gets rejected for being obvious then the firm doing the patenting must wait six months before filing another patent. It would do two things:

1. Teach the business that they should be more careful when it comes to patents, and
2. Frees up the patent office to do better research.

Re:Shatner?

[Anonymous Coward]

That post.

Would be better.

If it didn't read like.

An 11 year-old's.

First spelling test.

Hmmm.

[ta bu shi da yu]

Sounds like Word all right.

Re:Patent the idea of patenting other peoples idea

[R.Caley]

Patent the idea of patenting other peoples ideas;

There is an unbelievable amount of prior art.

Tangentially relevent: one news story recently which seems to have slipped past /. was the decision that in the EU non-published but `everyone knows that' information can count as prior art to kill a patent. (it was a biotech patent, but clearly the argument has wider applications).

Re:Why the fight?

[terryfunk]

Microsoft in no way invented XML. Dave Hollander invented XML.
http://www.mhxml.com/myinfo/MyBio.htm

Next up: U.S. Patent Office

[Anonymous Coward]

The same application has been filed at the USPTO as publication number 20040210818.

Correct me if I'm wrong .....

[ajs318]

..... but isn't a patent supposed to cover one specific means to an end rather than an end in itself? In which case this ought to be struck right down.

But if that's not enough, then there is plenty of evidence that this is not novel {KWord, anyone? OOWriter?}.

And if the prior art is not enough, this sort of thing should be obvious to an expert in the field. In fact, all of mathematics is obvious to a mathematician.

How obvious need obvious be? It's obvious that fire conducts electricity, even if you have never thought about it; because fire is a chemical reaction, a chemical reaction contains charged particles in motion, and charged particles in motion can carry an electrical current.

Agatha Christie

[alsy]

The example I give when people have trouble understanding that software patents are bad is what would have happened if Agatha Christie had been able to patent the murder mystery novel.

People understand that this is ridiculous, and why only copyright is used for books.

Ditto for software