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"Easy Work-Around" For Microsoft Word's Legal Woes
CWmike writes "Microsoft can likely use an 'easy technical work-around' to sidestep a recent injunction by a Texas federal judge that bars the company from selling Word, a patent attorney said today. 'The injunction doesn't apply to existing product that has already been sold,' said Barry Negrin, a partner with the New York firm Pryor Cashman LLP who has practiced patent and trademark law for 17 years. 'Headlines that say Microsoft can't sell Word are not really true,' said Negrin, pointing out that the injunction granted by US District Court Judge Leonard Davis on Tuesday only prohibits Microsoft from selling Word as it exists now after Oct. 10. 'All Microsoft has to do is disable the custom XML feature, which should be pretty easy to do, then give that a different SKU number from what's been sold so it's easy to distinguish the two versions.'"
They can just rename it to Words.
Really if MS decided to lobby against patent trolls they could have saved themselves the trouble in the first place.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
As we all know, when someone (usually a non-techie or a PHB) says "All you have to do is blah blah" it usually means it will be far from simple and easy.
Spoken like a true end-user. As a developer, almost every single time I've ever said something would be "easy to do" code-wise it has come back to bite me in the ass. I've learned not to use that phrase for anything, especially for things that really do seem easy to do. Now it is "I'll see what is involved in that request and get back to you." End-users always seem to think things will be easy to change. Disabling a feature in a widely used application like Word that likely has a ton of legacy code in it is probably not as easy as one might think. I'd also be skeptical about this statement considering it is coming from the opposing lawyer and not from one of MS's own engineers.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
I wanna see this shit play out - M$ is going to attempt to tell a Judge that they "fixed" it by disabling something - (then perhaps a hacker can - re-enable it)... wonder if this... ahem "JUDGE" will accept this...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Or does he not quite understand the reaction of a few million angry customers, who've just discovered that "Word" now doesn't read "Word documents" and have been blandly told "Oh, we changed the SKU number from 3454234 to 3454235, didn't you notice? You should have seen KB65564 for clarification of Microsoft Office Product SKUs."
Seriously, doing that would make the whole Vista Ready vs. Vista Capable debacle look like a 10 dollar parking ticket. What a stupid plan.
If Ms got rid of the ability to add custom XML, they would never be able to Extend the specification they proposed, and so Extinguish competition while everyone else plays catch up.
I trust Microsoft as far as I could comfortably spit a dead rat
I hear the sound of the millions of ./-ers sighing with relief.
Just impliment Open Document Format (ODF) like every other word processor.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
They could hire someone to dig through the IBM research journals and patents on the General Markup Language and its successor SGML, and find some prior art. They might even have some prior art of their own related to RTF. This patent sucks; it's on a basic technique that anyone writing a program to read a document with inline tags would at least consider, and I find it hard to believe it wasn't actually used on occasion.
Of course, there's a good chance that Microsoft will still try to fight the ruling, even though I've never used the Word feature to create XML documents. In fact, I hadn't even been aware of that feature before I read the original story.
This was known since forever.
Convert all DOCX documents to DOC format to prevent some Microsoft Office update removing the XML features and thus shutting people out of their DOCX documents.
What does the judge think of this ODF plug-in converter for MS-Office? Does it violate the XML patent as well as Sun Office and OpenOffice.Org and IBM Lotus Symphony?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
So the patent works like this: Instead of storing markup within a document, you instead store the markup separately from the raw data and then map each markup element to a character position in the raw data, like this:
:P
--Original document--
<foo>This is a foo</foo><foo><bar>This is a foo bar</bar></foo>
--i4i patented storage--
Raw document:
This is a foo This is a foo bar
Metadata Map:
1 <foo> 0
2 </foo> 13
3 <foo> 14
4 <bar> 14
5 </foo> 31
6 </bar> 31
The idea is that you should be able to edit the raw data, or the markup, independently of one another. The patent outlines three core scenarios: 1) Taking an existing document with inline markup and separating the text and the markup, 2) Generating a "separate data and markup" document from scratch, and 3) Combining the markup and raw data of a doc generated from scenario 1 or 2 back together to produce a document with the markup inline.
So why is this neat? The patent claims that you can edit both the content and the markup independently of one another. Except that you would require a specialized editor that manipulates both components to be able to do this and still maintain the "mapping" of markup to raw data. Hate to say it, but I can already do this on normal, inline-markup documents using notepad, or any WYSIWYG HTML editor.
The other claim is that you could apply any map to any raw data. Except that, unless the character positions of semantic elements in the raw data were exactly where the "Metadata Map" expected them to be, the result would be a huge mess. Practically speaking, the application of a metadata map to multiple documents (since the map is based on character position) would most likely require additional inline tags to align the separate metadata to the content, thus defeating the whole purpose of the patent. Or maybe you could establish a "standard sentence length" in order to allow one map to be applied to different documents - that would be great.
I'm having a hard time understanding how the technology described in this patent is actually useful at all, let alone how Microsoft has infringed on it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Doesn't Microsoft have their own patent related to exactly how they use the XML code within their software? If they do, and the patents conflict with each other, then Microsoft should not be in trouble. The patent office should have done a better job.
I'd better get out my debit card, go get some cash from the ATM machine after entering my PIN number, and buy some copies before they remove this feature...
The "easy technical workaround" for Microsoft is to dump their crappy OOXML format (which infringes this patent) and switch completely to ODF (which doesn't seem to).
Maybe this patent lawsuit is the reason why Microsoft started supporting ODF in the first place.
Aiding and abetting ... the perpatrators!
PS Note to Slashdot. ... Why? Are you ... Afraid? ,,, Are you paid by ... M$? ... Answer: Yes!
Seems you like Safari, but not Opera
Except the company suing them aren't patent trolls. If you took a minute to check out their site, they legitimately offer services that directly relate to what they're suing about.
First off I would have to disagree that your assertionis correct (see below). But at the same time I would assert that the technique in question might be on the hairy edge of patentable, making them legitimate--maybe.
Okay so what is the patent about? Well it's not about using XML to store documents. It's about a somewhat specific way of storing xml for documents in file systems or streams that has gains some efficiency over the conventional XML format. Specifically you write the documents plain text out as raw plain text without any XML tags. Then in separate location you write our all the xml tags. After each tag you write a pointer to the chearacter position in the plain text where the tag needs to go. The claim is this means that if you change formats you don't have to re-write the file with the plain text thus making it a lot faster to update (and you can imagine stream on the cloud). The second patented feature is that this allows one to store multiple "views". That is one could have multiple different xml tag sets for the same text body. Besides simply being a view, this is useful also for undo's
So you can see this pertains basically to "fast saves" of big documents, and possibly to cloud applications.
It's pretty easy to imagine other ways to skln this cat if you had too. FOr example, store diffs which I think is how the older MS fast saves work anyhow. But in the cloud world I bet just using XML views rather than diffs is slightly more javascript freindly given all the existing XML based code. plus it makes i more of an open standard.
SO while MS could work around this, it will make the resulting document less open format. a terrible irony.
One could question howver if this is really patent worthy. I'd say maybe. it does have tangible advantages and back when it was patented it might have been the first time for xml to be encoded this way (I have no idea on that). But it also seems kinda obvious. Many XML documents sort of do that in a way already. They insert some labeled format tag which we call a "style" then put the detailed XML description of that "style" in the document header. SOr example apple's pages does that, and presumbaly most processors with style sheets have done that. But that's still a bit different than actuall pointers.
So maybe maybe it's patent worthy. I'd say no. but it's arguable.
ANyhow getting back to the parent's assertion that they market this, well thats nonsense. this is a technique that once you tell it to someone is generic. No one would hire you to implement it for their own product so you can't sell any services here. And any specific implementation is irrelevant. FOr example this is not going to affect their competitiveness in selling a word processor.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
My problem with all of this is why so long for this action? Let's all pile on Microsoft and pile on and pile on. To me, this is not about patent infringement. It is again about someone(s) who for whatever reason do not MSFT and know MASFT is an easy target. And just think where all of these elitists attacking MSFT would be if not for MSFT and their vision and marketing. (Doing constructive things???????) Anyway, to me it just stinks of another MSFT with hunt. And I use a Macbook on the road and Ubuntu on my desktop for info sake
Sweet, sweet, catch-22. Show linux infringements of MS patents so they too can be trivially worked-around. Sleep in the bed you patented.
Is this cryptic lawspeak for "cash up front"?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/features/vox/i4i-won-a-huge-legal-victory-but-at-what-cost/article1251606/
Here's a link to an article about the Canadian company involved in the lawsuit.
From briefly skimming the article, here's what I got:
The company (i4i) did work for microsoft. Microsoft took the patented ideas the company used in its software, and began distributing an implementation of them for free in Word.
This appropriation by Microsoft of i4i's technology effectively destroyed the company's business. Hence the lawsuit.
Definitely not a case of patent trolling.
...FireFox does.
# How do I spell Firefox? How do I abbreviate it?
Firefox is spelled F-i-r-e-f-o-x - only the first letter capitalized (i.e. not FireFox, not Foxfire, FoxFire or whatever else a number of folk seem to think it to be called.) The preferred abbreviation is "Fx" or "fx".
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/releases/1.5.html#FAQ
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
It is the end of patents as we know it, and I feel fine.
Everyone sing along now.
It is the end of patents as we know it, ....
Living in Chile
Remember, computers run on magical mystical blue smoke
Incidentally, lawyers don't breath air but the same magical smoke. Don't let any of them near your computers! ;-)
You are speaking as a "mother"?
I was under the impression the product is only licensed to you, rather than sold. Thus, how can they be prevented from selling it, if they don't do so in the first place?
Wrong, that's not an easy workaround
Users will not be so happy to lose all their work done in docx.
And moreover there'll be users who already have word with XML and others without so we'll hear/see/read this sentence a lot "Can you please resend this in doc format(not docx)?"
"All microsoft has to do is stop selling word in its current version"... ok, but what about all of the copies on desktops. They are still violating this patent. They obviously have to be removed, and the new version of the software installed....at microsoft expense, of course. It would be wrong to do otherwise. If a P2P user spread software that violated someones legal rights, they would be fined, according to a crazy new formula where guessing damages is measured in superlatives. Here, microsoft willingly shipped software violating someones legal rights and made boatloads of money on it. I can imagine damages in superlatives squared. Every copy of windows XP ever sold has to have word removed from each and every computer, and a new non-infringing version replace it. Every one. No exceptions, plus they must pay the new company for violation. Forty Billion US dollars is a good estimate at damages, but griief and court costs are not added in, nor interest. Sixty billion would be a good estimate at the true damages. Not payable in software, but cash. Cold, hard cash. No fake 'software as currency' where a .20 cent disk with old software slapped on it is given a value of $700. No. We want cash.
The only thing stoping Microsoft from having a complete monopoly is the closest we have to subverting copyright: the GPL.
Pretty much all OSes and major software that can compete against MS are GPL or BSD licensed software, that is software that is license with the specific intent to go around copyright. If copyright didn't exist there is no reason to believe people would have not tinkered with software and hardware to make things more useful than what big, abusive corporations would have provided otherwise.
It would be a similar situation with patents, even more so, since the abolition of patents would not automatically imply the abolition of copyright, meaning that you could come up with ideas, but the implementation would be rewarded by the market, which is closer to how the system should work (with copyright seriously scaled down from the current abusive terms).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Hummm..... Another option to get around the patent would be to use ODF. THAT would be easy, and free to boot!
Your Servant, B. Baggins
By providing a financial incentive via secured production monopoly to produce something new without having the idea stolen. Duh. Seriously, DUH.
Don't discount the concept just because the USPTO doesn't know what a patentable idea is.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac