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Microsoft Patents XML Word Processing Documents
theodp writes "Embrace. Extend. Patent. On Tuesday, Microsoft was granted US Patent No. 7,571,169 for its 'invention' of the Word-processing document stored in a single XML file that may be manipulated by applications that understand XML. Presumably developers are protected by Microsoft's 'covenant not to sue,' so the biggest question raised by this patent is: How in the world was it granted in light of the 40-year history of document markup languages? Next thing you know, the USPTO will give Microsoft a patent for Providing Emergency Data in XML format. Oops, too late."
Don't sugar coat it. Tell us what you think.
I agree, can't we have some happy news about robot kittens or something!!
No. I know someone with a thought disorder that makes a lot more sense than the USPTO.
I think Adobe has prior art and, I'm willing to be corrected upon this, they're one of the few companies MS is wary of pissing off.
Correct about MS pissing them off. All Adobe needs to do in the event of MS making them mad is to change Flash/PDF just enough that they don't work with old versions, and then refuse to port/support a Windows version. As the developers / authors gradually move to the new standards, Windows gets further and further behind, and all they have is Silverlight and .doc files. That is not where MS wants to be.
I agree, can't we have some happy news about robot kittens or something!!
In other news, caring for kittens has been patented by Monsanto. Petting them has been patented by PetSmart. And taking endless pictures of them with your cell phone has been patented by Motorola. As a prevention, the new coalition Monotoromart is now hunting down and killing any cuddly, lovable, but otherwise adorably indignant animals in an effort to minimize "market confusion".
Just callin' it like I see it.
There's already prior art for that...
:/
so it should be really easy to get.
Why would they do something that stupid?
Remember, we're talking about Adobe here, whose idea of innovation is a version of Acrobat Reader that ships on 2 DVDs instead of just 1.
But it still costs a fortune to get it challenged. That is the real problem. It is an armsrace and the one with the biggest pocket wins. I wonder when this cold war bubble will burst.
Why don't you ask Nicola Tesla...
You can't take the sky from me...
I'm patenting complaining about Microsoft using XML. I'll make a fortune.
Have you ever heard the saying, "Microsoft is not a software company, it is an abuse company that uses software as a method of delivering abuse"?
>I wonder when this cold war bubble will burst.
All I know is, when it does hit that bullseye, all the dominoes will fall like a house of cards: checkmate!
Whoa, Steve, cool down. Throw a couple of chairs and chill out.
.
Trolling is a art,
Just overhaul the entire IP system.
Yep, every person who adopts IPv6 is another person free from Microsoft's evil embrace!
Err.. wait a minute...
.
Trolling is a art,
There's not going to be a some kind of Watergate or Pearl Harbour to shake the system to its foundations.
If someone patents regular expressions would it be like an IP Perl Harbor?
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Hope you called it XXXML...;-)
One of the things I like about Windows is that when I press Backspace it always works, I don't need to remember stty erase ^H.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The innovative thing is that they got OLE In Place Editing to save its streams to an XML document. It's actually may be something of a hack, but most notably, unlike Excel, you really can round trip a Word 2003 document with nested OLE in Place spreadsheets and other stuff and it works. I just created a Word 2003 document, created an Excel sheet inside of it, confirmed it by doing Excel stuff and using Excel menus in Word, saved the whole shebang as Xml, and I was frankly pretty pleased that it loaded it up again.
The thing is, I don't know that Open Office ever really supported OLE In Place Editing on Windows and I would bet probably not because OLE 2.0 is a set of COM libraries and I don't see such how they'd port it over to other platforms. That's a big job. In fact, I really can't think of any other Word processor besides Word that can be an OLE 2 host... seems like nobody else did the Scribble App that happened to be writing word processors....
In any case, so yeah, Word is way more powerful than anybody else when it comes to round tripping Xml, and its easy to demonstrate. Everybody else could at best only save a version, but, Microsoft can round trip the active nature of the content, and that is pretty cool, new, and innovative.
This is my sig.
I'm thinking anybody that uses inline CSS should probably expect a knock on the door from Microsoft demanding licensing fees, your firstborn, or perhaps a romantic evening with Steve "Mr. Patent Guy" Ballmer.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You too can break free of this abuse. You just have to tell yourself that you deserve better. That happiness is your right.
Just say NO. Enough is enough.
You can find LUG in your area, and call them anonymous for advice on how best to break free from this cycle of abuse and gain control back of your own life.
If you know someone who is being abused by MS, do not look the other way, but lend a hand. All it takes sometimes is a live-cd on a usb-stick to turn someone's life around.
[ $[ $RANDOM % 6 ] == 0 ] && rm -rf / || echo *Click*
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
I'm currently patenting a "method for storing graphical data of single or multiple close-proximity persons engaged in or about to engage in or have just engaged in acts of a nature which may appear or are lewd and / or unhygenic."
I'm going to make BILLIONS!
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/