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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."
it's already been suggested however this makes a decent case for a system with two competing patent offices. one to produce patents and the other invalidates them. give each a financial incentive to defend its position and let them fight it out. if the patent creating office issues a bogus patent and the patent invalidating office catches it, the patent creating office loses funding while the invalidating office gains funding.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
So basically, OOXML was a way to acquire a patent that could kill ODF-using applications in the US (that can't get legal backing, anyways)
I don't get how these idiots get around giving out patents like this. It makes about as much sense as apples app approval process.
Once a few years ago, say 2007 or so, MS threatened to announce a replacement cross platform doc that would supplant PDF.
Adobe released a statement in response to a planted question on CNet or something, that there was 'no reason why they couldn't release Flash-based competitor to PowerPoint,' and suddenly MS's latest initiative magically went away.
This.
It seems the "stupid patent formula" has been updated. It used to be "$X, but on the Internet". As in, "I've reinvented the wheel! But this time, it's connected to the Internet!"
The new "stupid patent formula" seems to be "$X, but using XML". As in, "I've invented fire! But this time, it uses eXtensible Markup Language!"
Since XML was the solution to all possible problems about ten years ago, we can probably guess at where the "stupid patent formula" will be in a decade's time. No doubt it will involve something like "$X, but using Javascript on a Web 2.0 social networking site that's accessed using a smartphone with a touch screen".
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
The Land Rushes that served up the last of the best lands America had to offer aren't too unlike the rationale driving the patenting of intellectual property. Corporations are driven by the need to protect themselves from potential future costs by claiming every "square inch" of intellectual property the US patent system will allow them to grab. If international laws are put in place governing intellectual property that are enforceable then the current seeming madness is the best available means of positioning American interests for the largest possible slice of the pie. About the time of the last land rushes Spencer's ideology of "survival of the fittest" was being touted as a rationale for the unconscionable actions of Yankee Traders who were infamous for their ruthless greed. It's a hedgemonists' zero sum game. There's method in the madness, madness though it be.
ideopath @ play
No the filing date is Jun 2002. Which means you'd have to find prior art dating before Jun 2001.
Start with LEXX (IBM research paper in 1987), an interactive editor that supported and displayed SGML (among other languages). The LEXX paper references JANUS (papers in 1981 and 1982), and an ACM survey paper from 1971.
This just in: Sony has filed no less than 50 patents on robot kittens.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
The patent system is not going to reform itself. Industry will not reform it. The public will not reform it. The legal system will not reform it.
I only partially agree with this. The "reform" that we're looking for can simply come if the PTO admits what it is doing. A very cursory glance at prior art and other patentability issues and then granting a patent. If the PTO was honest with itself that it is relying on the legal system to help it flush out the prior art claim then they should also FOSTER the ability of John Q Citizen to bring such a claim.
In envision a cheap prior art challenge (cheaper than a full court case) perhaps filling out a few standard forms the PTO could concoct and then let that run.
Alternatively, maybe the EFF can step up to this too?
I use XML to wrap oil and gas pipeline data and then display it as a type of document. Am I going to get sued by Microsoft? Am I a personal example of prior art? We (the people I work with) have been doing this for over 10 years.
AbiWord uses an XML based format, and it was mature enough to win awards in 1999, 2000, and 2001.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
These days a lot of software patents seem to be more of an investment tool than about innovation. You invest the fee of the patent and the guys hired to put together the patent (especially the lawyers) and you sit on it like any sort of security you expect to appreciate in value. If you are a larger company then you take on smaller companies and play chicken with them knowing that a large percentage of them will fold and apply payment until a larger company actually calls your bluff or government intervention invalidates your patent. Sometimes the patent just stands and it is a steady stream of cashflow. If you are a smaller company you either get some more investors (sometimes a large anonymous corporate backer) to pool in money so you can have the same pull as a larger corporation and pull the same formula. The fact is, business litigation is less about who is technically right, and more about who can keep the arms race going the longest.
With that being said it is fortunate that many Linux system providers (Red Hat, Canonical, etc) are very fortunate that they have friends in high places like IBM to check Microsoft and others who may potential litigate against patents Linux may infringe upon. Wow this sounds like a goddamn poker game doesn't it?
Out of interest, I was technology evaluation on a beta version of MS Word in 1998 or 1999, for our company, that had a pure XML document format already which I was pretty exited about.
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
Not only that, but check the first two "other references" in the patent:
They specifically reference an article on AbiWord and AbiWord's XML schema! And it's cited by the examiner, so surely that means they found the prior art and said "this is relevant". Did they get confused by it having "Word" in the app name and assume it was an MS product?
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There i'snt a *single* investor in the entire united states who would give money (I'm talking about serious money..) to a startup who *doesn't* want to patent whatever tech their business is going to produce.
Also, given that the big corporates like Oracle, Sun, MS, Apple get sued on a daily basis, having a big patent chest is the best thing they can do to protect themselves. In fact not patenting tech they produce could be seen as negligent behavior and shareholders could sue. MS has over ten thousand patents and have *hardly* sued anybody (compared to the more litigious 'cool' company elsewhere in california) , its just childish to single them out. But hey, its a free country.. :p