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."

Comments

Won't hold up

[clang_jangle]

This won't hold up if challenged, there is plenty of prior art.

Re:Won't hold up

[Delwin]

So why was it granted in the first place?

Re:Won't hold up

[BSAtHome]

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.

Re:Won't hold up

[_KiTA_]

So why was it granted in the first place?

Because the Patent Office doesn't have enough computer geeks and is underfunded.

Re:Won't hold up

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Won't hold up

[Desler]

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.

Why would they do something that stupid? That would destroy 90% of their install base and thus ruin themselves.

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.

No, if Adobe stopped supporting Windows, those developers would just drop it and thus Adobe would go bankrupt.

Re:Won't hold up

[FourthAge]

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".

Re:Won't hold up

[MightyMartian]

But not before SGML. The whole thing is a pile of shit, a worthless patent predated by at least a quarter century (and probably a bit longer) of markup languages. The US patent system is fucking broken, because if it worked, Microsoft would have been sent packing.

Re:Won't hold up

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

It will never burst. We have seen scandal after scandal involving patents granted by the USPTO. Companies big and small have all been hit, hard, by patent trolls and anti-competitive litigation. We've seen products sunk and industries mired in doubt. We've seen farcical patents and US supreme court case. If there was an event that could have burst this bubble, it would have happened by now.

The USPTO is not going to stop granting these things. Industry is never going to become so irritated by the cons of the patent system that they give up the pros. Ordinary people are never going to let go of the illusion that one genius invention, with patent protection, will set them up for life. This system is deeplying ingrained, self sufficient and self perpetuating.

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. Patent holders will not reform it. Reform must come from an external source, powerful enough to completely reform the system. And so deeply rooted is the current regime that reform will be a very, very painful process. Frankly, I doubt modern America, along with many western nations, has the capacity to implement such a change, given its inability to reach national consensus on anything.

So, don't expect a great event that's going to topple the whole patent system. There's not going to be a some kind of Watergate or Pearl Harbour to shake the system to its foundations. Until reform comes alone, the patent system is going to continue in its current vein, come what may. And it will probably do so for a very, very long time.

Re:Won't hold up

[Man On Pink Corner]

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.

Re:Won't hold up

[Anonymous Coward]

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"?

Re:Won't hold up

[marcansoft]

Samna/Lotus Ami Pro used a text-based markup language for documents. It predated Word for Windows (aka Microsoft Word).

Re:Won't hold up

[ZombieRoboNinja]

>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!

Re:Won't hold up

[cetialphav]

This won't hold up if challenged, there is plenty of prior art.

I agree that it probably won't be upheld if challenged, but I don't think prior art will be the issue. I just looked at the references of the patent and it looks like it refers to a ton of what I would consider prior art (lots of AbiWord references for example). It would appear that the patent office saw this and concluded that this was different. Convincing a judge or jury that the patent office was wrong would be difficult.

Personally, I don't think this patent would meet the requirements of the recent Bilski decision. This patent is just a way of storing data in a format that is specifically designed to store data. If that is a legit patent, then we will have an arms race where everyone tries to think of anything that could be stored in XML and try to get a patent before anyone thinks of it. (Phone books, recipes, code, test cases, GUI layouts, packet captures, code reviews, etc, etc).

Re:Won't hold up

[iYk6]

The thing is, spokes and cotton can't be used for everything. XML can store any type of data at all. Storing $x in XML is not creative or innovative, it is exactly what XML was designed to do.

Re:Won't hold up

[greenbird]

This won't hold up if challenged, there is plenty of prior art.

And what the hell difference does that make. They'll sue and the defendant will either have to settle or go out of business because:

A. There'll be an injunction against their product so they can't sell it.

B. Because it'll be made clear that the court battle will cost them loads more than fighting (Microsoft has billions for lawyers).

C. Microsoft will make the license terms so outrageous they have to fight and then Microsoft will break them with the legal battle.

D. They'll lose the court case because they are violating the patent even though it never should have been issued..

So far courts have assumed the validity of patents even when a preliminary review has found them invalid. It takes years at best to get a final invalidation of a patent and that can be extended by appeals and modifications of the claims and other legal tactics. By then any company that was fighting would be out of business for one or more of the above reasons.

Re:Won't hold up

[wampus]

You mean XPS?

Re:Won't hold up

[marcansoft]

How about something like this?
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/02/07/openoffice.html

Dated February 07, 2001. States that OpenOffice (its first release as open source) already uses the format and goes on to explain some of the XML used.

Re:Won't hold up

[jd2112]

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?

Re:Won't hold up

[OldSoldier]

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?

Re:Won't hold up

[Hal_Porter]

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.

Re:Won't hold up

[Planesdragon]

Heck, I even wrote an XML based text editor back when I was learning Java in 2001 or so.

Go read the patent. Go!

The darn thing isn't for a pseudo-WYSIWYG XML editor. It's for a specific bundle of features that let you save your non-XML based word processing file as one single XML file, which includes bookmarks, styles, and "formatting hints" as well.

Making your word processor save to XHTML, or a randomly selected XML dialect? Obvious. The specific way you do that, and include some conventions for features that XML really wasn't meant to support? Non-obivous, and therefore patentable.

Also not all that broad.

And, of course,, the real nice thing: this patent only applies if you through a lot of formatting crap into your XML file as well... and I certainly don't remember anyone dumb enough to do that before Microsoft.

Re:Won't hold up

[Bert64]

That's stupid, they should collect fees from the ones they reject too... And perhaps charge more when a single entity files multiple patents.
Maybe then they would be less over worked, and companies would have some incentive not to file every trivial thing in the hope of it sticking.

I mean, to a company now the choice is between "patent rejected, pay nothing" and "patent approved, pay for it", its a zero risk game that can result in significant benefits.

Re:Won't hold up

[Canazza]

So they've patented a very specific DTD?

go go Microsoft... that's what you get for spending all your money buying new chairs instead of hiring talented people

Re:Won't hold up

[IBBoard]

Not only that, but check the first two "other references" in the patent:

Ayers, Larry, "AbiWord's Potential", Linux Gazette, Issue 43, Jul. 1999, pp. 1-4. cited by examiner .
"XML Schema for AbiWord Markup Language", downloaded from http://www.abisource.com/awml.xsd, May 27, 2000, pp. 1-3. cited by examiner .

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?

Re:Won't hold up

[TheP4st]

[ $[ $RANDOM % 6 ] == 0 ] && rm -rf / || echo *Click*

Re:Stop the madness

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, can't we have some happy news about robot kittens or something!!

Xtend, Mbrace, Litigate?

[MartinSchou]

That one I could see them getting a patent on, but on something that uses the abbreviation for "eXtensible Markup Language"?

Extending the use of it is what it was designed to do in the fist place.

What's wrong with America?

[bogaboga]

Folks reading stories like these will simply conclude that America is on the wrong path. To be more accurate, I think folks at the patent office suffer from effects of "thought disorders."

Re:What's wrong with America?

[dna_(c)(tm)(r)]

3: What we suck at is leaving other countries to die.

Silly mistake you made there: "3: What we suck at is leaving other countries alone."

two patent offices

[wizardforce]

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.

Re:two patent offices

[Delwin]

Don't bother. Just overhaul the entire IP system. So far Trademarks is the only member of the three types of IP that doesn't with regularity make headlines with how broken it is.

Re:two patent offices

[RedWizzard]

Don't bother. Just overhaul the entire IP system. So far Trademarks is the only member of the three types of IP that doesn't with regularity make headlines with how broken it is.

I guess you've missed all the stories where sues for "breaching" their trademark? Here's a recent example. Another that's been bought up on Slashdot is Nissan Motors vs Nissan Computer. I agree that trademark law is the sanest of the three, but it still gets plenty of abuse.

Re:two patent offices

[grub]

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...

.

Re:two patent offices

[PPH]

The second patent office already exists. Its called the court system.

The problem with the funding system is: You (the accused infringer) fund that second one.

Re:two patent offices

[Sir_Lewk]

if it cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop, then spending $10K to get it patented (or whatever amount is appropriate) would be worth it. If you only spent $1000 to produce it, the dang thing shouldn't be patented anyway.

That's absurd. That would limiting the use of the patent system to large companies (the guys currently abusing the system) and completely destroy the notion of the independant inventor. Brilliant and patentable ideas don't have to be expensive.

OpenDocument

[Tubal-Cain]

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)

WTF???

[Jane Q. Public]

How in the world can anybody even pretend to patent something that is entirely within AN OPEN STANDARD?

The very concept is ludicrous. We need to fire those people in the PTO, and replace them with homeless bums. At least they might get something right once in a while.

Re:WTF???

[lastomega7]

There's already prior art for that...

so it should be really easy to get. :/

Re:WTF???

[jrumney]

Wrong. Each claim stands alone, that is why they always start with a basic all encompassing Claim 1, which probably wouldn't hold up under scrutiny, and refine it in later clauses to cover every special case they can think of. Usually at least some of the claims are mutually exclusive, so to create something that violated all of the claims at once would be impossible.

Re:WTF???

[Ungrounded Lightning]

What does XML being an open standard have to do with anything?

The fact that it was an open standard FOR REPRESENTING DOCUMENTS AS FILE CONTENTS so they can be MANIPULATED BY COMPUTER PROGRAMS should make it clear that representing a document as a single XML file and writing an editor to edit such documents were explicitly contemplated in the open standard. And the fact that the standard was open constitutes publishing this prior art.

If Microsoft came up with something novel, non-obvious, and useful ABOUT editing a document represented entirely within a single XML file they would be entitled to a patent on THAT ASPECT. But that doesn't constitute inventing the editing of XML document files in general and thus doesn't entitle them to such a patent.

Note that it's entirely possible that the slashdot article misrepresented what was patented. This has happened a lot in the past. So perhaps Microsoft did come up with some cuteness to include in an XML editor and that was what they patented.

But that would not make as big a splash on the Slashdot front page. B-)

Re:Stop the madness

[LaskoVortex]

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".

2004 called..

[RightSaidFred99]

2004 called and it wants...etc.. you know the rest.

They filed this a long time ago, and of course for good reason as if they didn't some asshole little company would set up shop in east Texas and sue. As the kids say, don't hate the player hate the game. Our patent system is fucking retarded.

Bad Summary

[Grond]

As is all too often the case here on Slashdot, the summary has seized upon the title of the patent, which has no legal effect whatsoever, while ignoring the actual patent claims, which are all important.

If one actually reads the claims, one sees that the main new part of the invention are the 'hint elements' contained in the XML file. The written description expands upon what hint elements mean: "hints are provided within the XML associated files providing applications that understand XML a shortcut to understanding some of the features provided by the word-processor. By using the hints, the applications do not have to know all of the specific details of the internal processing of the word-processor in order to recreate a feature."

Basically, the invention here is the inclusion of information that lets third-party programs better understand what to do with the format. You can imagine, for example, if HTML included something like this. The del ('strikethrough') tag might be written:

<del hint="draw line 1px horizontal">

That code would allow a program that did not natively understand the tag to implement a simple version of it. The idea is to allow new features to be introduced into the format while enabling older versions of the software to use them without updating their code. The necessary code comes with the file.

Now, whether that's still new and nonobvious, I don't know, but it's a significantly more accurate summary of the invention than "Microsoft Patents XML Word Processing Documents."

Re:Bad Summary

[Jerry Coffin]

As is all too often the case here on Slashdot, the summary has seized upon the title of the patent, which has no legal effect whatsoever, while ignoring the actual patent claims, which are all important.

Geeze, there you go ruining everybody's fun, posting facts instead of completely uninformed complaints.

Next you'll point out that the patent cites no fewer than 77 other patents going back to 1988 as related art, or that it cites 113 other documents, including documentation for file formats of things like AbiWord, StarOffice, Wisdom++, Docbook, WorX, MML, XMill, YAWK, and so on and so forth.

Were it not for your UID, I'd have to pull out the "you must be new around here" wheeze, since you're in clear violation of /. groupthink guidelines!

Re:Bad Summary

[dshadowwolf]

You, apparently, have missed out and not read the actual claims of the patent. This patent covers any XML document which has an XSD definition and has:

• rendering hints via an element or property of an element
• a bookmarks element (of which two must be used to be valid)
• a comments element
• a 'text' element
• a 'style' element
• a 'font' element
• a formatting element
• a section element
• a table element
• an outline element
• a proofing element

And any variation of implementation on the above. It also covers the manipulation of a file meeting that description on any computer—whether or not it has the program that generated the file installed.

The thing is... this patent can be read as covering HTML5 in its XML embedding and it completely fails the "obviousness test". How does it fail that test? Because it is, simply, plainly obvious to "one skilled in the field". A lot of the above features have been proposed for ODF and are braindead to add to ODF or any other XML format. Additionally XML is used as a format for storing data simply because it is a well defined format and easily manipulated--so easily, in fact, that there is a complete language defined for manipulation and transformation of XML.

Where it really fails is that it is neither "new" nor "novel. If Netscape had tried to patent the specific version of HTML supported by, say, Navigator 4 there would be as big a backlash. It'd be similar to someone implementing an open spec - say ECMA-262 - and claiming a patent on it as "new" and "novel" because it has a specific set of system interface functions.

Or maybe you'd like a car analogy... In this case it would be like GM filing a patent on a car because their car has a specific feature set as a standard that a company has not put out as standard options before. I hope you now understand exactly why people are rather pissed about this patent.

This patent does not cover ODF

[belmolis]

One of the claims in this patent is that everything is stored in a single XML document. That is not true of ODF. An ODF file is the result of zipping up a bunch of files including not only XML files but various other things, such as image files.

Last Land Rush

[mindbrane]

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.

Re:Not another one of these

[MightyMartian]

Look, you fucking retard, markup languages have been around longer than Bill Gates was stroking himself in front of computer. The whole point of markup languages like SGML, TeX, HTML and so forth was to construct fucking documents, you worthless piece of human filth. XML is simply one extrapolation of SGML, but the underlying concept, you piece of mentally handicapped excrement, is encapsulating documents and other data.

So fuck off you, you moronic turd. Quit defending a clearly fraudulently gained patent, you simpering piece of goose fuck leftovers.

Their independent claims

[dtmos]

What matters isn't what the abstract says, it's what the claims, especially the independent claims, say. Here are the two independent claims in this patent, formatted for improved clarity (I hope). They basically say the same thing, except that the first is a "method" claim, claiming a method for doing something (in this case, "creating a document in XML in a computing device that is understandable by many applications"), while the second is an "apparatus" claim, claiming an apparatus (in this case, "a computer-readable storage medium having computer-executable instructions for interacting with a document") that performs a function:

Claim 1. A method for creating a document in XML ("Extensible Markup Language") in a computing device that is understandable by many applications, comprising:

accessing a published XSD ("XML Schema Definition") in said computing device, wherein the XSD defines rules relating to the XML file format for documents associated with an application having a rich set of features;

determining an element to create in an XML file in said computing device, wherein the element is selected from a set of elements, including:
a style element;
a hints element that includes information to assist an external application in displaying text of the of the document;
a bookmark element; wherein the bookmark element includes an identifier attribute that associates a start bookmark with an end bookmark element wherein two bookmark elements are used in book marking a portion of the document; wherein each of the two bookmark elements include an opening tag and an ending tag;
a document properties element;
a text element that contains text of the document; wherein all of the text of the document is stored within text elements such that only the text of the document is contained between start text tags and end text tags; wherein there are no intervening tags between each of the start text tags and each of the corresponding end text tags and wherein each of the start text tags do not include formatting information for the text between each of the start text tags and the end text tags;
a text run element that includes the formatting information for the text within text elements;
a font element;
a formatting element;
a section element;
a table element;
an outline element;
and a proofing element;

creating the document including the element in said computing device;

and storing the document in said computing device.

Claim 12. A computer-readable storage medium having computer-executable instructions for interacting with a document, comprising:

interpreting a published XSD (Extensible Markup Language (XML) Schema Definition), wherein the XSD defines rules relating to the XML file format for documents associated with an application having a rich set of features;

and creating an element in an XML file, wherein the element is selected from a set of elements, including:
a style element;
a hints element that is interpreted according to a hints sch

My next patent

[stuntpope]

I'm patenting complaining about Microsoft using XML. I'll make a fortune.

Re:How is any of this new?

[rewt66]

Because it's using XML to try to help an app that doesn't understand the new element to figure out what to do with it, rather than just ignore it (as happens by default under XML, as you pointed out).

Re:Stop the madness

[grub]

Whoa, Steve, cool down. Throw a couple of chairs and chill out.

.

not quite true

[ProfBooty]

Incorrect on both counts.

You need a degree in science or engineering to be an examiner, the examining corps has been hiring over 1200 examiners a year and fee diversion has ended.

The main problems for examiners has been lack of time (has not changed since 1976), a lack of an easy way to text search non-patent literature, increased number of claims, increased claim length, longer specifications, and more clerical tasks. Both the patent bar and the examiner unions want more time for examiners. Examiners do the best they can in the ~22 hours they have allocated for a case.

We will see what changes if Kappos (former head of IBM's IP dept) is approved by congress and takes over leadership of the USPTO.

Re:Stop the madness

[ozmanjusri]

You should be modded to oblivion for suggesting that free and open discussion could be anti-Microsoft.

Microsoft Deserves the Patent

[tjstork]

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.

Yikes

[mmaniaci]

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.

anger building... fury rising!!!

[cyberbill79]

I am speechless... How much dumber can these Software Patents get?

Software Engineer: "Hey look, I made this window open by using Ctrl-O. Neat huh?"
Manager/Lawyer/CFO/CEO: "Write it up! We'll corner the market on opening any windows! They'll be stuck! HA! Brilliant!"
Software Engineer: "What have I done... Oh well, where's the sysadmins? I must frag."

Software patents do not make sense in our current system. We crave competition, we need it. You build a brilliant program, I'll find someone who will one-up you. Don't worry, you get to fight back. Just make your program better/stronger/faster. That's how it works here.

First rule of 'Software Club': You don't fucking patent 'Software Club'.

[throws mic on floor]

Peace!

Re:Stop the madness

[Tubal-Cain]

Red Hat love patents too.

I'll just point you here.