Slashdot Mirror
Judgement Against Microsoft Declares XML Editing Software To Be Worth $98?
Many people have written to tell us about the patent infringement lawsuit that resulted in a $200 million judgement against Microsoft by a small Toronto firm called i4i. Techdirt has a line on the details of the suit where the patent in question is for "separating the manipulation of content from the architecture of the document." i4i argues that this covers basic XML editing to the tune of $98 per application. "It's quite troubling that doing something as simple as adding an XML editor should infringe on a patent, but what's even more troubling is that the court somehow ruled that such an editor was worth $98 in the copies of Microsoft Word where it was used. An XML editor. $98. And people say patent awards aren't out of sync with reality?"
Despite how one feels against M$, this is ridiculous.
It is not fair at all and could be used against other software with similar capabilities.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
If it's an issue of editing XML documents in the sense of using XML to store structured data (such as Ooo documents), then the patent should be overturned. The whole point of XML is to provide a generic (and thereby obvious) means of structuring and editing data.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Right. And any Open Office developers who happen to live in the U.S. - whose coding would be subject to U.S. patents - would do what exactly to avoid their liability for infringing the patent? And even if we pretend (as TFS seems to imply, incorrectly) that patent damages somehow have to be tied to a count of distributed copies, and that OO could cut off U.S. distribution, how would the cover the damages for copies already distributed in the U.S.?
If the patent applies to what OO is doing, it would be a big problem for the project.