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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."
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.
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."
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 why was it granted in the first place?
Because the Patent Office doesn't have enough computer geeks and is underfunded.
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.
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.
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:
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."
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
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.
May the Maths Be with you!
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.
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!
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.
Whoa, Steve, cool down. Throw a couple of chairs and chill out.
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Trolling is a art,
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