Microsoft Applies to Patent RSS in Vista

Cyvros wrote in with a link to Wired's Monkey Bites blog, which is featuring a post on Microsoft applying for a patent on RSS. As the article points out, this isn't as crazy as it seems at first blush. From the wording of the application, post author Scott Gilbertson interprets their move as a patent on RSS only within Vista and IE7. From the article: "The big mystery is what Microsoft is planning to do with the patents if they are awarded them. The sad state of patent affairs in the United States has led to several cases of Microsoft being sued for technologies they did arguably invent simply because some else owned a generic patent on them. Of course we have no way of knowing how Microsoft intends to use these patents if they are awarded them. They could represent a defensive move, but they could be offensive as well -- [self-described RSS inventor Dave] Winer may end up being correct. It would be nice to see Microsoft release some information on what they plan to do with these patents, but for now we'll just have to wait and see whether the US Patent and Trademark Office grants them."

That is not patent for RSS

[Anonymous Coward]

I quick read the application through. It is more about a system that aggregates RSS content further to other applications. Think of refactoring your RSS reading application into background daemon and sending the content via D-Bus to all subscribers. Something like that but it is definitely NOT a patent application for RSS itself, the main article is ignorant and written by someone really stupid.

I'd mod the main article as -1: Troll if I could. It's just anti-microsoft FUD.

Sounds like an sort of ODBC for RSS

[Anonymous Coward]

From my reading it looks like they are going to provide an object model that stands between RSS providers and RSS and non-RSS consumers. MS wants clients to access their proprietary object model in which feed subscriptions are modeled as a hierarchy of folders, and wherein the object model provides access to a shared list of feed subscriptions and they can populate from standard RSS and other sources.

Sounds like the proprietary extension of public standards thingy they've been doing for a while. A good or bad thing depending on if you are a hater or not.

Dave is not amused

[Anonymous Coward]

Dave is not amused by the sly implication contained in that description of him:

http://www.scripting.com/2006/12/23.html#anatomyOf AHack [scripting.com]

Re:Who has Microsoft actually sued

[thue]

Here is one, on the ASF video file format: http://www.advogato.org/article/101.html [advogato.org]

Re:Who has Microsoft actually sued

[kripkenstein]

"Who has Microsoft actually sued over patent infringement?"

Why make this a general debate about Microsoft's patents (or patents in general)? The current patent is very specific, and isn't accurately summarized in TFA anyhow, so debate here may be skewed. The actual patent states specifically, in the "Background" section:

RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, is one type of web content syndication format

i.e. Microsoft is NOT patenting RSS, which is one possible misconception. Secondly, the patent mentions various problems with RSS (various file formats, lack of a single unified reader for the entire desktop), which they intend to fix. So, they may be looking to patent a system that uses RSS or improves it; presumably this would run on Vista, but to say they are "patenting RSS in Vista" seems odd.

Re:Who has Microsoft actually sued

[dattaway]

Who would they sue? I believe everyone they could. IBM used to covertly sue everyone trying to manufacture a competing Personal Computer. They would quietly visit the company with their lawyers and ask them for royalties on several patents. If they balked, they informed them there were several thousand patents they could litigate with. Of course a deal was made and it was all NDA. Most of the companies slowly bled to death. These things rarely make the news.

Patent Interference, Litigation, and 102(b)

[jbf]

I've been really annoyed lately at how bad patents get awarded and then litigated...

In real patent litigation, the main way to claim invalidity is 102(b). This says that if the work was published in a printed publication, or for sale in this country, more than one year prior to the filing date, then the patent is invalid. There are other grounds for invalidity, such as 103 (obviousness), but because of bad case law, obviousness is a very slight extension to 102(b) (hopefully this will be fixed with KSR v Teleflex, currently before the US Supreme Court). This one-year bar essentially means that as long as I'm within one year of being the first to do it, and I'm the first to file for a patent for it, then I'll win as long as no previous inventors filed for a patent. (We're a first-to-invent system with some caveats; if the first inventor doesn't try to patent it, he can lose his patent rights to a later inventor).

In technology, one year is a really long time, so its important that everyone files for patents lest something "obvious" be granted, and your competitor take away all your customers by claiming that your technology infringes their patent. Its way easier to solve this problem before the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences than it is before a judge and jury who have no technical knowledge whatsoever (and probably try patent cases once in a blue moon). Sure, if you lose in district court, you can always appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, but by the time the appeal is litigated, you may have lost most of your customers.

Microsoft's doing the smart thing by filing for this patent. Hopefully they'll also do the right thing by not abusing it.

Re:Patents are Never Defensive

[jbf]

That's only a defense if you publish more than a year prior to the offender's date of invention, or as long as you're still working on the invention. See 35 USC 102(b) and (g).

Re:Dave is not amused

[ortholattice]

Others, on the other hand, are not amused that he describes himself as its "co-inventor". While Dave Winer made important contributions to RSS, it was created by Netscape. See What is RSS [xml.com]:

The original RSS, version 0.90, was designed by Netscape as a format for building portals of headlines to mainstream news sites. It was deemed overly complex for its goals; a simpler version, 0.91, was proposed and subsequently dropped when Netscape lost interest in the portal-making business. But 0.91 was picked up by another vendor, UserLand Software [i.e. Dave Winer], which intended to use it as the basis of its weblogging products and other web-based writing software.

Re:Why?

[I'm Don Giovanni]

I think they're trying to patent the system wide RSS API that Vista provides and that IE7 on XP provides. The API allows apps to hook into a "common feed" for all their RSS/Atom needs. So any app that supports RSS show the same feeds (if they use the api), allowing for easy switching of RSS readers, browsers, etc.

not Vista/IE7-specific

[oohshiny]

Second of all, from my reading anyway, Microsoft is not patenting RSS, but RSS within Vista/IE7. Of course I'm not a patent lawyer, I could be wrong about that.

You couldn't patent "RSS within Vista/IE7" if you tried. This patent looks like it's trying to cover broadly RSS syndication, RSS aggregation, RSS feed conversion, and object-oriented libraries for working with RSS feeds. The fact that it's beating around the bush and not patenting the RSS format itself is simply patent strategy: Microsoft's lawyers are trying to "build a fence" around RSS, leaving the open core open, but patenting everything around it so that you can't use RSS without infringing on their patents.

Make no mistake: if this patent gets granted, most RSS software will be infringing.

MSDN Blog Response

[omicronish]

Microsoft PM Sean Lyndersay posted a response [msdn.com]:

First, these patents describe specific ways to improve the RSS end-user and developer experience (which we believe are valuable and innovative contributions) -- they do not constitute a claim that Microsoft invented RSS.