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Microsoft patents CSS?
ewhac writes "In the current issue of The Bulletin (an email newsletter, pricey subscription required), it is reported that, in mid-January, Microsoft was awarded patent #5860073 on, "The use of style sheets in an electronic publishing system." The Seybold article casts doubt on the validity of the patent, citing prior art back to the 1960's, and on the competence of the US Patent and Trademark Office for awarding it. The article also calls Microsoft's motives into question for failing to mention this patent application to the World Wide Web Consortium, with whom it has been working for some time to develop a style sheet standard. Thomas Reardon, director of standards at Microsoft, claims that it will offer a "free and reciprocal" license to anyone wishing to use the technology, adding, "These are the most liberal licensing terms out there." (It would seem Reardon is not aware of the GPL.)
"
Liberal terms, until they decide to change them...
-Thomas
--
http://msie.winzig.com/
See patent US05819372.
Unfortunately, the USPTO doesn't know the meaning of public domain. They'll happily patent anything, even if it's obvious and comes with tons of prior art..
They suck. Loudly.
This book I have in front of me, Cascading Style Sheets: Designing for the Web, by Håkon Wium Lie and Bert Bos, ISBN 0-201-41998-X, published in 1997, must be a figment of my imagination. Not.
...seize the open standards and then make them proprietary/licensed/patented.
Patent: US05862362 Network failure simulator
Applicant: Microsoft Corporation
(insert NT jokes here)
Don't get me wrong here, but don't you think its blatantly obvious what the US Patent Office is doing? It seems to be in someone's best interests to keep as many technology patents in the USA as possible, so that the US has a better chance of being/remaining one of the top (if not _the_ top) technology country in the world, and all us other countries will have to pay some US company for stupid patents that they don't deserve.
:(
.au!
It's not your fault guys, but it's pretty dodgy, IMHO. America is turning into the M$ of countries.
Cheers from
AndyM
Then I'll collect royalties from the USPTO.
My patent on using paper derived products to wipe one's ass was just approved! I'm going to be rich! Of course, there will be liberal licensing terms.
http://www.theonion.com/onion3311/microsoftpatents .html
:)
Too late, the bastards already got it
You could spend hours finding moronic patents from the high intellect at MS:
US5680629: Method and system for previewing computer output - you cant be serious
US5644739: Method and system for adding buttons to a toolbar - drag and drop for controls?
US5577187: Method and system for tiling windows based on previous position and size
US5659674: System and method for implementing an operation encoded in a graphics image - rollovers anyone?
US5815705: Method and computer system for integrating a compression system with an operating system - STAC?
Thanks for that Zem.
:)
I suppose I should have done a little research
Cheers
AndyM
(DSSSL is XSL for SGML...if you dont understand there no room to explain) shouldnt DSSSL invalidate this patent?
samedi@disinfo.FREEBILL.net
That's what I thought - thus the name US Patent Office.
I believe European nations have a very different
view on this 'patent' type of thing, yes?
It would be nice if we could be rid of this nonsense, but it seems that the laws in the US are set up so that whoever has the most $$ wins - so the 'fixing' of this type of thing is unlikely at best.
Many large companies like IBM and Microsoft hold hundreds or thousands of patents, but use them mainly for defensive purposes. Mainly because they don't really need the paulty revenue that comes from patent licensing.
The real people the first are the small cash-starved startups, failing big companies, and patent-owning law firms.
Example: Intermind worked with the W3C on P3P, and is now threating to charge up to 2.5 million a year to license it, because they are receiving a patent on "privacy negotiation" techniques. Another cash starved loser.
Example2: Eolas suing Microsoft over plugins. Basically cash starved.
Example3: Wang suing Microsoft over COM. Wang suing Netscape over "Save As". Basically, their earning started to suck and someone in management said "can't we find a way to extract some extra revenue out of our IP". Then someone dug up the Wang patent during a review and viola.
Example4: Law firms that purchase patents just so they can sue and make money. For example General Patent. This are the sorts of guys who would purchase an "XOR" patent if they though they could sue a deep pocketed company.
Now, as evil as Microsoft is, I doubt they would try to sue anyone who implemented CSS/XSL. The DoJ case for one thing, would restrain them.
I'm much more worried about people like Intermind, Priceline, General Patent, Eolas, etc who failed at their core business, and can't produce their own product, so they just sit back and sue everyone else.
This looks like a direct play against Mozilla, especially seeing how the big release is finally coming up. Methinks this BS patent wasn't taken out with any commercial vendors in mind-- with all the prior art lying around, if and when they take 'em up in court it'll get blown out of the water.
But Mozilla, of course, can't afford "liberal licensing" if fee > $0.00 (gee, what are the chances of that?) nor the legal gunpower to shoot down this nonsense. Doomsday scenario: developers work 'round the clock, as the 5.0 release date comes up, removing all style sheet code to avoid infringement? Resulting in a browser that doesn't render HTML nearly as nice as a certain unnamed competitor?
Produced by the very company that owns the patent and therefore has no issues with licensing whatsoever?
Just a deep, dark thought. Although seeing some of their other hare-brained patents (thanks to above fellow AC) maybe it's just being paranoid.
On another note, I don't know about the whole "protocol decommoditization" thing... I mean, if they own the patent, and they don't hold it to anyone's throat (as with the others), then it wouldn't necessarily give them any more power to turn it into their own proprietary monstrosity, would it? (anymore than rolling it into their own pathetic software would, that is). It's all a matter of who supports what, right?
(here's hoping Mozilla will be the be-all end-all of *ML bickering...)
I've got a feeling this could blow up in MS's face. CSS is positioned by the W3C (note the copyright notice at the bottom of the spec's cover.html page) as the future of web-page presentation. This makes a whole lot of people stand up and take notice; how many web developer websites out there have articles on it? How may people are already using it in their own sites? How many software packages use it in both developmental and rendering modes? IMO This is too big for Microsot to handle - the public are going to come down hard of them this time.
Q: What is the status of U.S. Patents Internationally? Do they apply in other countries?
What's next? Let's narrow it down - what Internet technologies *haven't* been patented yet? Is Linux patented? Can it be? What about browser itself? What about all the RFCs?
What will the W3C do now???
James Green
Yeah, and Jeffery Dahmer was under a lot of stress when he killed those guys.
The Patent Office is a FAILURE. Period.
Stop the damn excuse engineering.
Name one original idea, let alone product that MS has every come up with? These are the kinds of things that make me want to look for another country to move to. If MS ever did want to charge anyone for using style sheets I for one would completely ignore it. If something that has so much prior art, is completely common knowledge and has been used widely by many others I say it is our duty to not respect that patent, no matter what the US patent office has to say. There are somne patents that you could debate for quite sometime but this one isn't even close, anyone who'd want to defend it is quite simply a complete idiot.
it always amazes me how many people are ready beat on microsoft while they fail to see that their own beliefs in intellectual property pratically guarentee that things like this will come about. Few times in history have there been such a massive system of reward and incentive for people who refuse to innovate. People who cant see that the whole concept is inherently bad, and flawed are blind.
and nor wil they likely ever
well if it happened to him, I don't think I would cry many tears, nor would I say he didn't get what he deserved, but the simple truth is - I don't think it will solve the problem. 10 others would just step up to replace him.
Too late; I already patented the idea of patenting the concept of being awarded a patent.
... is Bill Gates a trademark already ?
one of the reasons I created my IP Not web page, was because I foresaw problems like this coming a long time ago. I know it's a charged issue, but I hope people would just read it and think about it. Seriously, I wish people would just consider that the belief in patents and copyrights is founded on a faulty foundation - that perhaps they're not what they're cracked up to be !
I can't help but wonder. What is the "training" and "standard operating precedure" that the USPTO has in place for the people who examine patent applications? Does a FOIA request for that information sound like a good idea?
it's true! i've met him several times. arrogant little twerp. there is so much prior art and work by other here only a borg poop would speak as he AND have a title like that
How about moving to a county where such ridicolous things like this are not permitted by law?
Thomas is a flaming, immature, egotistical asshole. It's complete BULLSHIT that he's
claiming that this is the most liberal licensing
terms around -- he *KNOWS* better. I also think it is *VERY* duplicitous of M$ to not have disclosed this to W3C -- they pushed VERY hard to get CSS adopted, and to make the HTML4 standard deprecate any style related attributes in favor of using CSS -- now it becomes clear why. God damn it, they are EVIL!!!!
US Patents Office is just that - *United States* patents office.
Noone outside US gives a damn about US patents. Just remember current scenario with RSA encryption.
Enuff said.
Resistance is futile -- My sources tell me that Microsoft also has patents pending on:
1. A method of obtaining bogus patents by ignoring
prior art, and
2. A method of challenging bogus patents by
citing prior art.
You will be assimilated.
Like it or not, they have the patent. The question is, can we reverse it or cause MS sufficient grief that they will have to concede the issue and release the patent into the Public domain.
/.'er in the appropriate locality to get out from behind the keyboard, and put pertinent, researched information into how bogus this patent really is (I was using something like style sheets back in 1990 using Clipper!!) into the hands of the prosecutors in the anti-trust suit.
My suggestion would be for a
In the best of all possible worlds, this would happen in a way that would capture the mainstream media's attention and really piss alot of folks off. Which might get the attention of the high and might in Washington to finally fix the USPTO.
Of course, we don't live in the best of all possible worlds. In the meantime sign the petition at:
http://ethepeople.com
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US05801689__ &language=en
US5801689: Hypertext based remote graphic
user interface control system
US05862362 01/19/1999 Network failure simulator
That would be Windows NT then?
I just read the full patent. Follow the link to the US Patent and Trademark office. Do a search on Microsoft and the patent #. It's a real patent BUT it was submitted in 1995. It's not just about web stlye sheets - it's about all style sheets, like the templates used in word processing software. It seems to be more about the process of creating them then about them (style sheets). The whole description is outdated compared to todays specs and tech. - andreag@geoplan.ufl.edu
There's something else we can do about it.
Under Title 35, Part III, Ch. 30, Sec 302, any person may request a re-examination by the Patent Office of any claim of a patent on the basis of prior art. There is a fee required for the re-examination. The re-examination is to be conducted as the examination should have been conducted. All prior art must be searched. That is, if this idea has existed for a while and is in general use, the idea is not patentable (by law), and the US Patent Office should NOT have issued the patent.
Therefore, all we need is for a number of corporations or people to hire a patent lawyer to challenge the patent on grounds of prior art and present evidence of such prior art.
Unless this is done, MS may choose to withdraw its "free and reciprocal license" at any time.
So, there you go.
Alternatively, simply write the patent office, contact your Senators and Representatives and complain about gross incompetence on the part of the patent office.
Complaining among ourselves gets nothing done. Complaining to the people we elected may get something done. Miring Microsoft in Patent Litigation for the next 10 years might be counterproductive, although it might be satisfying.
Certainly, Microsoft has failed to recognize others who were also participants in its efforts. This may be a violation of the patent law. If the w3c published ANYthing with respect to these methods, the "process" may fail to be patentable (on the basis of prior art).
I'm not a lawyer, but we're on the web, and we can read just as well as anybody else.
www.law.cornell.edu has the U.S. Code online; read it yourself.
Don't just sit there. Do something.
Webbsmith23
05 February 1999 (UPI)
Microsoft today was granted a patent on air, its chemical composition, and the process of respiration. Company officials would not comment on rumors that royalties will be charged on all use of air.
Stop.
Hmmm...
What is YOUR WebTV doing right now?
If it wasn't Adobe, it might have been someone else, but I doubt it was Microsoft. Weren't style sheets used in Pagemaker a long time ago? Prior to this whole WWW thing? WHAT THE FUCK?!?! How can Microsoft patent something that has been around in the DTP world for so damn long?
It says something about a "digital publishing system". Does that mean that Adobe and other companies can't use style sheets anymore if Microsoft says they can't? THIS IS AN OUTRAGE! Who the hell do they think they are?
Oh yeah... I remember now.
CSS is cool - cuts way down on the amount of code, makes maintainance of pages much much faster. Have you tried it?
you are crazy. do you even know anything about html 4.0? CSS cuts way down on the sizes of your HTML docs meaning faster downloads. that's only one of many benefits...
his odor is well known to us.
Thomas Reardon
tell him yourselves
Here's his email address thomasre@microsoft.com tell him yourselves
The original BSD license was much more liberal. Brush up on your history.
Style sheets that get applied before the text is poured in have been used in QuarkXPress and its related product for years. I'd love to see how Microsoft slipped that by the patent office.
ACTION:
MS Product and Corporate Questions: Waggener Edstrom at (503) 245-0905
MS email contact info is at http://register.microsoft.com/regwiz/regwiz.asp
The USPTO phone number is 800.786.9199 (800.PTO.9199). They say they are "not yet equipped to handle general email correspondence". What a shock.
US Asst. Attorney General for Antitrust: Joel Klein.
* "If your comments relate specifically to the Antitrust Division's suit against Microsoft Corporation, please direct your correspondence to Microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov". Seems like this qualifies, eh?
* Other DOJ email contact info is at http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/contact/emails.htm
* DOJ Antitrust phone contact info: http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/contact/phoneworks.htm
Vice President Al Gore (cheerleader for hi-tech and, um, less distracted than others at the White House)P resident.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/Mail/html/Mail_Vice_
Or email direct at vice.president@whitehouse.gov
US Senate Commerce, Science, And Transportation Committee. cfm?COMMITTEE_ID=419 -- lists all members, with links to their homepages.
John McCain, chairman: John_McCain@McCain.senate.gov
http://www.senate.gov/~commerce/
508 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg
Washington, DC 20510-6125
(202) 224-5115
http://www.senate.gov/committees/committee_detail
The House Committee on Commerce
2125 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-2927
Commerce@mail.house.gov
House Committee on Science
2320 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-6371
Bogus Patent petition:w .cfm?ETPID=0&PETID=98938 &ETPDIR=affiliates/national
http://ethepeople.com/affiliates/national/fullvie
INFO:
W3C copyright terms: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/ipr-notice
W3C software license: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/copyright-softw are.html
"Microsoft Awarded Style Sheet Patent"x .html
Reprinted from The Bulletin: Seybold News & Views on Electronic Publishing, Vol. 4, No. 19, February 4, 1999
http://webreview.com/wr/pub/1999/02/05/style/inde
This article apparently broke the story.
Wired News: "MS Wins Patent for Web Standard" by Chris Oakes7 741.html
2:05 p.m. 4.Feb.99.PST
http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/1
WEB STANDARDS PROJECT CALLS FOR CLARIFICATION OF WHETHER PATENT GIVES MICROSOFT CONTROL OVER TWO KEY WEB STANDARDSx 2.html)
(press release: Feb. 4, 1999)
http://www.webstandards.org/patent.txt
(Also discussed at http://webreview.com/wr/pub/1999/02/05/style/inde
At this writing (11:30pm PST Feb. 5), nothing on this story has appeared in/on:
* C|Net
* ZD Net and all related publications/sites
* CNN
* NY Times, et al.
* Seattle Times (www.seattletimes.com)
>> Just one question, how does he walk with balls
>> that big ?.
With a wheelbarrow, perhaps?
I read the specifics of the patent in theabstract, and it's not just for stylesheets but stylesheets that get applied to a content window BEFORE any text gets poured in. So it's a patent for specifically "web" style sheets.
Quick! Somebody patent a pixel! Then we can charge Microsoft for using all those pixels on our screens.
http://www.patents.i bm.com/details?pn=US05815793__&language=en
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
MS wants to patent CSS? Okay. I'll sue them for trademark infringement. I've been driving cabs and limousines since Bill Gates was chasing whores in New Mexico, and "Where do you want to go today?" is a question I have often asked my passengers.
But I can't claim authorship of this question. Hackers, drovers, and rickshaw pullers have been asking it since the dawn of civilization.
In the interest of fairness, limo drivers (who work primarily by reservation) will probably need to reclaim the "Where do you want to go tommorow?" question from a certain Finnish gentleman.
And then we'll go to work on the words "Hack" and "Hacker," which are also ours, and are regularly misused by nerdish Gates wannabes.
Well, maybe we'll let the Linux and OS people skate this time. But you guys better tip *real good* next time you ride with one of us REAL hackers...
--Robin Miller
If the US govt makes it harder to to do business by enacting these silly rules, then companies will have to operate outside the US. This is not good for US business. I think when I write my letter of protest I'll have to point that out. (While they won't listen to arguments about fairness, they might listen to arguments about losing money.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
The people who run the US Patent and Tradmark Office are comlete and utter DOLTS. This is just another example of it.
Is the domain USPTOSucks.com domain taken?
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
What's the difference between this and, say, Mail Merge in Microsoft Word for DOS, circa 1990. You specify that a field, let's call it 'name', is Times Roman, 12pt but do not put the text there. Then you hit activate the mail merge command and text appears in the desired format.
All that this seems to add is multiple layers of style sheet. And even that could be down with Style Sheets refered to in the Mail Merge file!
I've only read the extract, but I cannot imagine the rest of the patent request is more compelling in terms of uniqueness.
This is just dumb. There's really no other word for it.
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
Yeah, yeah. You're right, but that doesn't mean we have to sit back quietly and let them struggle through this alone. If things aren't working well, let's raise a voice and get some changes made.
A previous post mentions the idea of having industry specific patent groups. That sounds workable. Maybe we need to start putting more people onto the research of patents and charge companies money if they try to patent something with obvious prior art. Maybe patents could be done away with completely. Maybe we could...
This point is, the USPO is working hard and I'm trying to understand everything they have to keep track of but I'm also in favor of changing a system that obviously isn't working very well. I hope I don't sound like I'm whining. The fact is, I'm pretty frustrated.
-Derek
P.S. Hey, I just had a thought. The blame also rests with microsoft. Who can really say that MS didn't try to pull a sneaky one here? Is there any way the wwwc can pressure them to release the patent?
Hmmmm. enough rambling....
Did you know that Microsoft has a trademark on the word "internet" as well? They didn't enforce it, so it's not valid anymore. Patents are different, of course, but prior art should take care of this one in short order.
On another note, don't pay too much attention to Reardon. He's one of those kids who got high SAT scores and now believes himself to be smarter than everyone else based on the value of his stock options. Most of his coworkers think he's an asshole, and he's probably proud of it. Last time I was at his house, he and his 'friends' were trying to impress each other with their knowledge of wine, measured by the amount one could afford to spend on a bottle. Pathetic.
What's the difference between this Word thing from TeX manuscript files, circa 1960
Um... While I agree that TeX predates the 1990 Word mentioned in the previous post, no way in hell is it anywhere near that old. Try mid 1980's.
Since they indeed seem to be patenting the basic concept of style sheets rather than a technical implementation, I would still support the view that this is a ridiculous claim... afterall, ALL style sheet implementations use, in essence, the concept of preformatting undefined content blocks.
I would think that the actual logic-flow of the formatting code woould be relatively unimportant as it is akin to the "chicken before the egg" paradox: since all style sheets are meant to be applied to arbitrary content, you have two possible orders of operation... either preformat an empty region and then fill it with fetched content, or fetch the content and recursively apply style sheet rules to it. I cannot imagine that either of these is unique enough to patent.
Please clarify: which of my "beliefs in intellectual property pratically guarentee that things like this will come about"?
As I read the responses I am fairly certain that most of us here do not consciously support such abuses of the law... and it certainly seems that plenty also have solutions in mind, or at least a clear idea of the problem.
Please enlighten us as to the incentive I, or anyone here, has provided for Microsoft to own what should rightfully be in the public domain.
check out the references to the patents listed....
there's no doubt about commercialising open standards here
Lie, "Cascading HTML style sheets--a proposal", http://www.w3.org/People/howcome/p/cascade.html, 10 Oct., 1994.
Gifford, "Polychannel systems for mass digital communication", Comm. of ACM, v.33, n. 2, p. 141(11), Feb. 1990.
Jackson, "The Published Word", PC User, n. 137, p. 32(4), Jul. 18, 1990.
Journalist User's Guide: Your Personalized Newspaper for Compuserve®, PED Software Corp., pp. 1-111, Jan. 1994.
Huser et al., "The Individualized Electronic Newspaper: An Application Challenging Hypertext Technology", GMD Report No. GMD-664, Jul. 1992.
Sterahn et al., "Positioning HTML Elements with Cascading Style Sheets", http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/WD-positioning, Jan. 31, 1997.
Lie et al., "Cascading Style Sheets, level 1", http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/REC-CSS1, Dec. 17, 1996.
Hughes, "Thinking about style sheets", http:www.w3.org/Style/mail/kh-2-May-95.html, May 2, 1995.
Duncan, Rey, "Power Programming: An HTML Primer, " PC Magazine, Jun. 13, 1995, pp. 261-270.
Microsoft ®Word, "About Styles" Chp. 9, pp. 178-183 and Document Templates Chp. 10, pp. 205-224, User's Guide, 1993-1994, Microsoft Corporation.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Anyone else out there do a double-take on the article title? For a second there, I thought the article was saying that Microsoft had patented the concept of Closed Source Software. That would be ironic.
Wonder if I can do that?..... :)
Actually, I've just started a petition at E-the people, titled "bogus patent problem". See if it meets what you're thinking of.
Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from
Kythe
*sigh*
Get off my lawn.
I have this vision of the people at the Patent Office buried under mountains of IBM patents related paperwork
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The Bulletin article also calls on Microsoft to turn the patent over to the W3C, and relinquish all claims to the "technology."
Clearly, more than just us geeks are getting sick to the teeth of bogus patents.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
In particular, push it to Senators who've been very "pro-internet", particularly "pro-internet-shopping", since many of the patents have been "I know own the complete rights to on-line shopping" or "I own the digital 'Shopping Cart'".
My first suggestion would be Senator Leahy from Vermont. His bills (some passed into law) have already acknowledged his interest into protecting online rights (from a copyright standpoint). He should be the easiest to convince that the Patent system now is doing the exact opposite of promoting true development on the web.
Obviously, this should wait until after the Clinton fiasco is finally out of "public thought" and Congress is ready to do something approaching "real work" again.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
ummm... I... oh, never mind. I can't think of anything nice to say, so I'll just shutup.
.
"The article also calls Microsoft's motives into question for failing to mention this patent application to the World Wide Web Consortium, with whom it has been working for some time to develop a style sheet standard."
Of course... I see now. Let's work with an open standards body, let them do the bulk of the work in hashing out the details, we'll let everyone else start using it, then we'll implement it and patent it and drink champaign to toast all that good will effort making us money now. Oh yeah, and we won't charge them that much to use the tech they've given us.
Jeeeeesus! "The Seybold article casts doubt on the... competence of the US Patent and Trademark Office for awarding it."
No kidding! Seeing more and more stories like this popping up everyday, such as the possibility to create an entire business model around patenting and litigating against commonly used open technology...
Is there anyway someone can sue this bunch of gov't numbskulls to either give it up, or if we can't get rid of patents like that, at least get their acts together? Wouldn't it be smarter to have industry-specific patent awarding groups rather than a monolithic gov't body??
The basis of a democracy is that the citizens should *zero* patience for problems with the government. It doesn't whatever reason the PTO is incapable of properly dealing with it software patents (which frankly shouldn't be patents in the first place). If the PTO is incapable of accomplishing the task, then it should simply not involve itself in software patents until such time as it is prepared to do so.
We get to slam Micro$oft AND the US Patent office at the same time? Sound the fire alarms!
0 1 - just my two bits
US4827404: Method and system for computer programming
4 04
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn10=US04827
Is it me, or does this CSS patent smell like Microsoft's first shot fired in the war to "de-commoditize protocols" a la the Halloween Document"?
If we (MS) can't keep the protocol closed or the API proprietary, fine; we'll just patent the whole dang concept.
Sheesh.
Jay (=
I wonder how this compares to macro packages in troff and TeX (i.e man page formatting macros) which essentially let you markup a document using high level tags, which then use a predefined style file to format the document.
I also don't see the differences between the prior art and Microsoft's claim. I'm glad I turned down that Patent Office job 10 years ago. Patent law is basically a fancy way of defining the difference between a glass being half full of water or half empty.
The latest figure I read was that IBM had over a
billion in income off of their patent licensing.
It's a big money maker for large companies. Other
companies, such as Xerox, are starting to get sue
happy over patent infringement.
I mean, we have all of these geek minds available, surely someone can come up with a workable plan on stopping this sort of nonsense. This is an issue that continually causes me to grumble. Software patents are bad news. Concept patents are worse. They serve no _useful_ purpose that copyright does not.
I know, I know, I'm singing to the choir on this one. It's just that within such a large group of people with so many large "movements" (OSI, Linux, GNU, etc.) that we should be able to get organized and fight this somehow. These abuses are only going to get worse before they get better.
I would take this project on myself except I am so poorly organized when it comes to these types of things. I can barely keep my own coding projects moving along at a decent pace... but I would definitely find some time to get involved if someone else were to organize it.
There must be something we can do,
-Paul
Edu. sig-line: Choose rhymes with lose. Chose rhymes with goes. Loose rhymes with goose.
Comparing? THEN use THAN.
...from texas who lives in a shack with his chevy and his 22 and is crazy enough to help us all...
Or of the BSD-style license, which is the most liberal license.
Rich
The USPTO is just quacky now and they need a damn good slap to recognize that they're completly undermining any semblance of openness, free thought, and "free" software. The CSS was _supposed_ to be OPEN.
Who's got site space? I'm willing to donate time and effort to do this. We all saw this happen to the lzw compressor (Published in Dr. Dobbs before patented). What about Mozilla? Will they get a price break too? And how about anybody designing any sort of XML design tools?
I somtimes wonder whether RMS is right about GPL - but when I see crap like this it just eeks into my blood like fire. Those bloody greedy barf chunks are going to eventually patent everything. Software patents aren't wrong IFF they are REAL?! But this is just wrong.
Too much prior work goes unchecked by the USPTO and they need a wake up call. 5000 slashdot readers might wake them up. These people make the money and then we get burdened(by higher costs in HW and SW) with licensing. They obviously only care about previous PATENT claims, and probably never look into actual prior work - if they had then they would have seen the 1000+ pages of info on w3c which M$ had absolutly nothing to do with.
Let the war begin. Let the signatures start!
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
I certainly agree with people that the patent office has made a huge number of really stupid decisions lately....but keep in mind everything that they have to keep track of that gets patented, and how fast the tech industry in general moves. Certainly changes need to be made to allow them to work effectivly in this intense enviroment, but just keep in mind the enormity of the task they have to undertake. Its easier to criticize than understand, unfortunely, the only way to truely fix something is to understand it first. Cheers.
Brian
figure they got computer in the offices in 1996/1997.. how up to date can the examiers really be on technology?
.. 2hours to do there searches it seems, so how much can they search? That office needs a complete overhaul! I know I worked there. They are one of the few gov offices that generate there own revenue form there patents, so they feel that they have to have 'customer service'. Unfortuanately it comes at what price?
They aslo have about
They want patents to only spend 18 mo or less in the office so someone trying to met there DAM! quotas issues the patent and said let them fight it out in court, cause he could not find art on this.
I think patent applications need to be made open and available to the public for people who know about the technology to have a look at too, as these are really the people that know the tech....
Only 'flamers' flame!
http://www.wired.com/new s/news/technology/story/17741.html
PS: This very well may be a stupid question, but what's to keep MSFT from getting a patent on HTML or some variation thereof? If they can patent an open standard like CSS ...
And what about getting a patent on other open standards ... like internet protocols?
Possible? Or am I way off base here?
=moJ
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Member in Good Standing,
If you really want to be outraged, you should go to IBM's patent search, set the search word to Microsoft, and the collection to U.S. Inventors & Companies. You'll get almost 800. You'll get 20 for just the last three months.
(Sorry, I tried a URL-encoded request, but they make it much more difficult than it has to be, probably for this very reason.)
-- Blame any errors on your own stupidity. All wrongs reserved.
Just a thought
Have the PTO put up a Web site. The examiners abstract the application and post the summary and complete application. The public gets 6 months to submit ( via Web form or e-mail ) examples of prior art, objections and such. The examiners then review the comments and see if anyone has valid prior art or other reasons not to grant the patent. If they don't have time to research each application, let interested parties do the research for them.
They'll still have to weed out flames and garbage, but that's got to be faster to do than researching the subject.
Intresting. I was using style sheets in 1992 with AmiPro, a word processor from Lotus. In fact, I still use that very same word processor -- it works great. I always use style sheets with it now. I made some six years ago.
So this is new technology? This is worth patenting? MS probably wants me to think so, but I'm not brain dead. I just wish the patent office would quit awarding patents for concepts, since thats not what patents are for!
"Luncheon meats make the sawdust in your stomach explode."
Then join the LPF.
http://lpf.ai.mit.edu
I've just been told by an ex-MS employee that they've got an incentive plan in place - a $5000 bonus for each patent that's an MS employee submits and gets approved.
Somebody please goto patent the use of alphabets.
See...!? M$ did something that no human being can ever thought of ....
I thought that stuff like this was supposed to be over in the 40's. Companies continue to overwhealm government and society over all because they have too much money. Maybe I'm just jealous, I mean I wouldn't complain if I had that much cash, but I don't so I'll whine. Anyway, we should all just sit back and get used to it for now. I just can't wait for y2k. I have a good feeling that over 50% of Microsoft users are going to have a big wake up call when their computer won't boot on Jan 1.
Muhuhahahahaha
Dissenter
Dissenter
"There is no knowledge that is not power."
I don't think Bill can walk with "balls this big." Hell, if I had his money, why would I bother to walk.
Dissenter
Dissenter
"There is no knowledge that is not power."
Is it possible that MS has thought ahead with hopes of biting their competition? (they'd never do that, right?)
Put simply, they've been getting bit for the outcome of their 'embrace and extend' lifestyle.. and some of the biting has been in the form of license enforcement, etc. Perhaps CSS is an equal weapon that the boys in Redmond can fight with--an eye for an eye, a free license agreement for a free license agreement..
(just a thought.. but does anybody care enought about CSS to let their hand show? I suppose we'll find out)
It is not a surprise if Microsoft has patented CSS as they intend to use this specification to build new file formats in Office 2000 to replace native formats from Word, Excel and others.
This licence is undoubtedly done to block other editors who would use the CSS outside web browsers. CSS will replace HTML language and thus Microsoft will be able to dictate towards where language CSS will go owing to the fact that Office is really the standard. In the long run, Microsoft will control the basic language of the Web. See from here all propaganda: "We invented the language of the Web" and all the mercantism which will be followed from there.
So what happens when Billy Boy decides that if everbody doesn't play by his rules, he's gonna take his bat and ball and go home?
"When you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow!"
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I say we patent the business model of filing thousands of spurious patents in vague, generalized language, then suing the makers of any product that could possibly be interpreted as infringing... wait a minute, there may be considerable prior art on this one!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Remember that this is the same office that accepted a device called the "Super Cruise Bracket" as patentable, as shown on an investigative report done by 60 Minutes. The Bracket was a bogus patent claim, essentially for a device that allowed you to bracket the gas pedal of your car down if your car lacked a cruise control!!!