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Microsoft Applies to Patent RSS in Vista

Posted by Zonk on from the don't-jump-the-rails-just-yet dept.

Cyvros wrote in with a link to Wired's Monkey Bites blog, which is featuring a post on Microsoft applying for a patent on RSS. As the article points out, this isn't as crazy as it seems at first blush. From the wording of the application, post author Scott Gilbertson interprets their move as a patent on RSS only within Vista and IE7. From the article: "The big mystery is what Microsoft is planning to do with the patents if they are awarded them. The sad state of patent affairs in the United States has led to several cases of Microsoft being sued for technologies they did arguably invent simply because some else owned a generic patent on them. Of course we have no way of knowing how Microsoft intends to use these patents if they are awarded them. They could represent a defensive move, but they could be offensive as well -- [self-described RSS inventor Dave] Winer may end up being correct. It would be nice to see Microsoft release some information on what they plan to do with these patents, but for now we'll just have to wait and see whether the US Patent and Trademark Office grants them."

4 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. That is not patent for RSS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I quick read the application through. It is more about a system that aggregates RSS content further to other applications. Think of refactoring your RSS reading application into background daemon and sending the content via D-Bus to all subscribers. Something like that but it is definitely NOT a patent application for RSS itself, the main article is ignorant and written by someone really stupid.

    I'd mod the main article as -1: Troll if I could. It's just anti-microsoft FUD.

  2. Re:Who has Microsoft actually sued by thue · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here is one, on the ASF video file format: http://www.advogato.org/article/101.html

  3. Re:Who has Microsoft actually sued by dattaway · · Score: 4, Informative

    Who would they sue? I believe everyone they could. IBM used to covertly sue everyone trying to manufacture a competing Personal Computer. They would quietly visit the company with their lawyers and ask them for royalties on several patents. If they balked, they informed them there were several thousand patents they could litigate with. Of course a deal was made and it was all NDA. Most of the companies slowly bled to death. These things rarely make the news.

  4. not Vista/IE7-specific by oohshiny · · Score: 4, Informative

    Second of all, from my reading anyway, Microsoft is not patenting RSS, but RSS within Vista/IE7. Of course I'm not a patent lawyer, I could be wrong about that.

    You couldn't patent "RSS within Vista/IE7" if you tried. This patent looks like it's trying to cover broadly RSS syndication, RSS aggregation, RSS feed conversion, and object-oriented libraries for working with RSS feeds. The fact that it's beating around the bush and not patenting the RSS format itself is simply patent strategy: Microsoft's lawyers are trying to "build a fence" around RSS, leaving the open core open, but patenting everything around it so that you can't use RSS without infringing on their patents.

    Make no mistake: if this patent gets granted, most RSS software will be infringing.