Many people have written to tell us about the patent infringement lawsuit that resulted in a $200 million judgement against Microsoft by a small Toronto firm called i4i. Techdirt has a line on the details of the suit where the patent in question is for "separating the manipulation of content from the architecture of the document." i4i argues that this covers basic XML editing to the tune of $98 per application. "It's quite troubling that doing something as simple as adding an XML editor should infringe on a patent, but what's even more troubling is that the court somehow ruled that such an editor was worth $98 in the copies of Microsoft Word where it was used. An XML editor. $98. And people say patent awards aren't out of sync with reality?"
Microsoft Corp said on Wednesday a Texas federal jury...
Texas? You mean the state of Marshall, TX [overlawyered.com] where Microsoft (and everyone else who wants to win) holds all of its prosecuting patent cases? I do believe Microsoft may be getting a taste of its own medicine!
Indeed, but if enough of these cases are used to sting microsoft, that they decide to turn against software patents, then the fight against software patents gains a powerful ally.
Please reference one case where Microsoft was plaintiff in the Eastern District of Texas (where Marshall resides) and won some huge award... I'm not holding my breath. P.S. --> A plaintiff is the party that brings a case, Microsoft was the defendant in this case. Under Federal rules of civil procedure, plaintiff has a choice of forum (assuming there is personal jurisdiction and venue, but MS conducts business in all 50 states, and venue is often pretty easy to manufacture as well).
I do believe Microsoft may be getting a taste of its own medicine!
You make it sound like it's a good thing...
I haven't read the patent, but TFA makes it sound like it applies to any kind of "WYSIWYG" editing of a document that gets saved in a structured format, not only XML ("separating the manipulation of content from the architecture of the document").
Besides the obvious implications for software like OpenOffice, this covers pretty much any type of WYSIWYG editing: spreadsheets, UML diagrams, math formulas, MS's Visio/Project outputs, the list goes on. Hell, all modern browsers support a WYSIWYG HTML editor. Do they infringe this patent?
This is absolutely terrible. The only good thing about it is that Microsoft has the money to overturn this joke of a patent, and can get enough media coverage to point out how broken the U.S. patent system is.
I haven't read the patent, but TFA makes it sound like it applies to any kind of "WYSIWYG" editing of a document that gets saved in a structured format, not only XML ("separating the manipulation of content from the architecture of the document").
Not just WYSIWYG. There are TeX and laTeX templates that aim to separate content from structure, and have been for a long time. There are even elements of it in roff. Just how old was that patent?
#1 The patent application is from 1994. The example in the patent looks like the same early-XML format used by Ventura, a desktop publishing program released in 1986 by Xerox (and subsequently purchased by Corel). The general idea and much of the exact format was borrowed from expensive, proprietary computerized typesetting equipment that was popular in the 70's.
#2: The person who "examined" the patent, a Jankus; Almis R, is now a patent [patents.com] agent [uspto.gov]. I'm no longer amazed at how often bad patent applications are approved by law students, future patent attorneys and/or agents.
The patent say, bad! Horrible! Instead, use content + "metacode map":
"I am a sentence."
+
chars 0-7 : normal chars 7-15: bold chars 15-16: normal
This is somehow supposed to be dramatically better in every way. Every frickin memory structure ever invented to edit any kind of structured text did this first and did it better.
I'm quite surprised that anyone would ever be found in violation of this "patent", because it's a pretty stupid thing to do.
Well, since you mention it, YES, it's a good thing!! What could possibly be better, than for a dozen winning suits against multi-billion dollar companies over frivolous patent suits? When the idiocy begins to hurt the idiot who are so successful at lobbying Washington and other capitals around the world, THEN we might see some sanity forced into patent law.
Really, I want another dozen such suits brought against Microsoft quickly. Each one of them worth a billi
Texas? You mean the state of Marshall, TX [overlawyered.com] where Microsoft (and everyone else who wants to win) holds all of its prosecuting patent cases? I do believe Microsoft may be getting a taste of its own medicine
What do you mean by "all of its"? Do you know how many software patent cases Microsoft has been the plaintiff in before the TomTom case? Zero. (And BTW, Texas was convenient for TomTom, as that's where they have filed many of their suits against competing GPS companies).
Oh, and defendants have been winning more than plaintiffs in the Eastern District of Texas since early 2007.
Right. And any Open Office developers who happen to live in the U.S. - whose coding would be subject to U.S. patents - would do what exactly to avoid their liability for infringing the patent? And even if we pretend (as TFS seems to imply, incorrectly) that patent damages somehow have to be tied to a count of distributed copies, and that OO could cut off U.S. distribution, how would the cover the damages for copies already distributed in the U.S.?
If the patent applies to what OO is doing, it would be a big problem for the project.
And then torrenting OpenOffice inside of the US would be illegal for an entirely different reason than 99% of all the other torrent traffic out on the inter-tubes.
And any Open Office developers who happen to live in the U.S. - whose coding would be subject to U.S. patents - would do what exactly to avoid their liability for infringing the patent?
Stop contributing. Where is it written, that OOo has to have contributors from the US? There will be others. And I'm sure the courts would appreciate the fact that they stopped upon finding out about the infringement.
Also, the fact that they sued the richest software company in the world does not imply they'll go after individuals.
If it's an issue of editing XML documents in the sense of using XML to store structured data (such as Ooo documents), then the patent should be overturned. The whole point of XML is to provide a generic (and thereby obvious) means of structuring and editing data.
The whole point of XML is to provide a generic (and thereby obvious) means of structuring and editing data.
Not to mention ODF is an international standard, so any US patent should in my opinion be null and void. Of course that's common sense, so likely not true.
The use of XML for documents may postdate the patent, but text processing systems that separate document structure from details of formatting go back at least to the late 1970s in the form of Brian Reid's Scribe. Unless I have misunderstood the patent, this constitutes prior art.
... but what's even more troubling is that the court somehow ruled that such an editor was worth $98 in the copies of Microsoft Word where it was used. An XML editor. $98. And people say patent awards aren't out of sync with reality?
Well--and I stress that I am not defending this ruling--you could look at it like raising the stakes involved since there are so many patent cases.
Example: You steal a piece of fruit. You are convicted in front of a jury and slapped on the wrist. So you and everyone else does it again tomorrow. To combat this they increase the penalty to a $70 fine and 4 days in jail. In an ideal world, people stop stealing fruit.
Of course, I'm told hands get chopped off for stealing in some countries (could be wrong on that one though). I do know in Texas they're not opposed to electrocutin' ya for certain offenses though... maybe they are just on their way to try to get all these patent cases prevented?
Doesn't make a lick of sense at all considering you can't throw a goddamn progress bar [edn.com] on your application without risking litigation.
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday May 29 2009, @05:31PM (#28144851)
If you were to decide to consider allowing your eyes to accept light emitted from your screen after having navigated to a site where details of the case were located and then allowed your sensory equipment to interpret the light patterns in accordance to the conventions of the English language, you might find that i4i demonstrated its technology to Microsoft in 2001 with the hopes of licensing it for use in Microsoft Word. Microsoft declined, but with office 2003, they offered the same capabilities as that which i4i tried to license them. The case was filed in 2007, so it took them like 3-4 years to sue. There were also some emails they found that microsoft was discussing i4i and their patent prior to adding the office 2003 functionality.
So Basically the company was able to present evidence that Microsoft intentionally reviewed, and then disregarded the patent and implemented the same feature as the patent holder tried to sell them. That probably didn't sit very well with the jury. Microsoft should have been a good citizen and tried to strike down the ridiculous patent, rather than just ignore it and hope for the best.
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday May 29 2009, @05:56PM (#28145119)
Anyhow, the patent is regarding "separating the manipulation of content from the architecture of the document." That's so hopelessly vague it's not even a joke.
The patent claims (which define the scope of the patent) are easier to read after going through the specification a bit more closely. This patent is about a particular method of encoding structured data.
Consider the example (given in the patent) of <Chapter><Title>The Secret Life of Data</Title><Para>Data is hostile. </Para>The End</Chapter>. Typical parsers would encode this as some kind of tree.
This patent teaches coding it by creating a "Metacode Map" with six elements encoded as {Element Number, Element, Character Position}: ({1, <Chapter>, 0}, {2, <Title>, 0}, {3, </Title>, 23}, {4, <Para>, 23}, {5, </Para>, 23}, {6, </Chapter>, 46}). The content is then stored separately as one long strong: "The Secret Life ofDataData is hostile. The End"
I haven't read the claims closely enough to say whether they are consistent with the teachings of the patent, but it does seem to be narrower than simply editing XML (or SGML). I also suspect that there aren't a whole lot of infringers since this is an unusual way encoding marked up language. Does Word do this? The jury though so, but the code is all under seal, so it is a bit difficult to check out independently.
A system and method for the separate manipulation of the architecture and content of a document, particularly for data representation and transformations. The system, for use by computer software developers, removes dependency on document encoding technology. A map of metacodes found in the document is produced and provided and stored separately from the document. The map indicates the location and addresses of metacodes in the document. The system allows of multiple views of the same content, the ability to work solely on structure and solely on content, storage efficiency of multiple versions and efficiency of operation.
It sounds a bit like an embedded XSLT, more or less. Maybe?
Just from reading the abstract, it sounds more like templating -- I know the basic structure of your format, so I can go in and replace the strings (content) between the parts that are structural. Or, to modify the template, I could hide the content, and allow you to modify just the structural part... and I could present it in any number of ways to allow you to edit it.
XSLT is more one-directional, and there isn't the mapping made to relate how things go back into the original file.
When reading patents, you always ignore most of the boilerplate and preamble. Just go for the Claims section.
In this case, Claim 1 is quite understandable:
1. A computer system for the manipulation of the architecture and content of a document having a plurality of metacodes and content by producing a first map of metacodes and their addresses of use in association with mapped content; said system comprising:
metacode map distinct storage means;
means for providing a menu of metacodes to said metacode storage means;
and means for compiling said metacodes of the menu by locating, detecting and addressing the metacodes in the document to constitute the map and storing the map in the metacode storage means; and
means for resolving the content and the metacode map into the document.
The USPTO should start denying patent applications that contain this kind of deliberately obfuscative gobbledegook. This is like describing cup of coffee as a "insulating ceramic material vessel for the transportation of central nervous system-stimulant-laden liquids of temperatures approaching gradual evaporation adapted to both manipulation and imbibation for the purposes of maximum early-hours alertness and/or circadian rhythm modulation." It's like reading Foucault.
From that vague wording it seems that using the XML::RPC module in Perl would violate the patent. You can use that module to separate your manipulation of the xml and the data that is represented in the xml. Then again, it seems to me that this is exactly what word processors have been doing since wordstar. The editor allows you to focus on the contents while the program manipulates the file under the hood. The fact that it uses XML is not really relevant.
Only if you trying to program an XML parser without using an existing library. Creating the XML file is easy. Reading the damn thing back in is hard. Something I found out during one of my programming classes.
You're joking, right? I develop an XML editor as my living, so I'm more than passingly familiar with this topic. Generating XML is on the order of a few hundred lines of code. A proper, full XML parser is on the order of 100,000 lines of code. The xerces source code is over 300,000 lines of code - there's a reason for that - does that sound "simple" to you? Even the simplest of XML parsers (and even if you only a tiny subset of XML) is orders of magnitude more complex and time-consuming than merely generating XML, which is trivial. Sure there's "very specific documentation" - so what? Have you even looked at that specification? The full specification is large. Having "very specific documentation" for something has nothing to do with difficulty of implementation (I'm sure there's "very specific documentation" for wiring a 747 too). And a parser has to handle so many more cases than a generator. And is much more work to test. For reasonably simple cases, you can write a generator that can generate a valid fairly complex XML document in under an hour. Good luck writing a proper XML parser in under an hour for an XML document of the same complexity.
I don't even have to read the article to know that this must be in East Texas. Anyone ever realize that maybe Texas should succeed? Not only would it whip Washington D.C. into line faster and more completely than anything else, but it would end Marshall Texas as the patent infringement destination resort of choice.
And people say patent awards aren't out of sync with reality?
Are you aware of how much genius it takes to come up with the idea of first parsing the XML file into an internal in-memory format, editing that, then flattening that back to an XML file? Nobody would have done anything different than re-parsing and modifying the XML every time a minor change was made in the editor, if it weren't for this insightful patent.
The patent would apply to any markup language. This is totally obvious and there are many implementations which have been around for more than 25 years.
There are several errors here.
1) the patent should not have been granted because to do something like this is obvious.
2) the court must be totally incompetent.
3) the defense must be incompetent as well.
Any database driven web page is an infringement. It doesn't need to be XML. In fact most databases have this and Oracle is an example. PostgreSQL also has tools which do this.
Any templating software does this.
This illustrates just how bad the USA patent system is.
I hope it goes to appeal and that this gets straightened out. The thing is we software developers are under attack these days We will find that the 3rd world will eventually do all our software development. I know I would not go into software development if I were back in my university days. If a person does anything of any significance they can expect to be sued. No other profession that I know of is attacked as we software developers are being attacked.
Defense does not necessarily need to be incompetent. As long as the accuser can demonstrate that the patent applies, defense has no choice, until the patent used itself is invalidated, which is not easy. (Remember that one-click shopping patent of Amazon).
I've only seen one recent case of Microsoft using patents against competition (FAT vs TomTom). However, every year they have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to unknown companies. Especially the Eolas case was ridiculous, and those money, unfortunate
I agree. I enjoy seeing them get a taste of their own medicine as much as anyone, but this sets an awful precedent. Can we organize a virtual million man march and get the patent system fixed? (and by "we" I mean someone other than me. I'm too busy drinking soda in my mom's basement.)
Texas? You Don't Say! (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft Corp said on Wednesday a Texas federal jury ...
Texas? You mean the state of Marshall, TX [overlawyered.com] where Microsoft (and everyone else who wants to win) holds all of its prosecuting patent cases? I do believe Microsoft may be getting a taste of its own medicine!
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, too bad it sets a precedence that fucks us all.
Down with "soft" patents!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed, but if enough of these cases are used to sting microsoft, that they decide to turn against software patents, then the fight against software patents gains a powerful ally.
Re:Texas? You Don't Say! (Score:5, Informative)
Please reference one case where Microsoft was plaintiff in the Eastern District of Texas (where Marshall resides) and won some huge award... I'm not holding my breath.
P.S. --> A plaintiff is the party that brings a case, Microsoft was the defendant in this case. Under Federal rules of civil procedure, plaintiff has a choice of forum (assuming there is personal jurisdiction and venue, but MS conducts business in all 50 states, and venue is often pretty easy to manufacture as well).
Parent
Re:Texas? You Don't Say! (Score:4, Informative)
There's a bit of a gap between 'holds all of their prosecuting cases' and 'here is a case where they were the defendant'.
Also, if what CajunArson writes is correct, it was the plaintiff that chose Marshall and not Microsoft.
Damned if you do, dam... oh wait, just 'damned if you are Microsoft, to hell with facts'.
Parent
Re:Texas? You Don't Say! (Score:4, Insightful)
I do believe Microsoft may be getting a taste of its own medicine!
You make it sound like it's a good thing...
I haven't read the patent, but TFA makes it sound like it applies to any kind of "WYSIWYG" editing of a document that gets saved in a structured format, not only XML ("separating the manipulation of content from the architecture of the document").
Besides the obvious implications for software like OpenOffice, this covers pretty much any type of WYSIWYG editing: spreadsheets, UML diagrams, math formulas, MS's Visio/Project outputs, the list goes on. Hell, all modern browsers support a WYSIWYG HTML editor. Do they infringe this patent?
This is absolutely terrible. The only good thing about it is that Microsoft has the money to overturn this joke of a patent, and can get enough media coverage to point out how broken the U.S. patent system is.
Parent
Re:Texas? You Don't Say! (Score:5, Interesting)
You make it sound like it's a good thing...
I haven't read the patent, but TFA makes it sound like it applies to any kind of "WYSIWYG" editing of a document that gets saved in a structured format, not only XML ("separating the manipulation of content from the architecture of the document").
Not just WYSIWYG. There are TeX and laTeX templates that aim to separate content from structure, and have been for a long time. There are even elements of it in roff. Just how old was that patent?
Parent
Re:Texas? You Don't Say! (Score:4, Informative)
Two minor points.
#1 The patent application is from 1994. The example in the patent looks like the same early-XML format used by Ventura, a desktop publishing program released in 1986 by Xerox (and subsequently purchased by Corel). The general idea and much of the exact format was borrowed from expensive, proprietary computerized typesetting equipment that was popular in the 70's.
#2: The person who "examined" the patent, a Jankus; Almis R, is now a patent [patents.com] agent [uspto.gov]. I'm no longer amazed at how often bad patent applications are approved by law students, future patent attorneys and/or agents.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Since I am bored, I read it.
"I am a <b>sentence</b>."
The patent say, bad! Horrible! Instead, use content + "metacode map":
"I am a sentence."
+
chars 0-7 : normal
chars 7-15: bold
chars 15-16: normal
This is somehow supposed to be dramatically better in every way. Every frickin memory structure ever invented to edit any kind of structured text did this first and did it better.
I'm quite surprised that anyone would ever be found in violation of this "patent", because it's a pretty stupid thing to do.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"You make it sound like it's a good thing..."
Well, since you mention it, YES, it's a good thing!! What could possibly be better, than for a dozen winning suits against multi-billion dollar companies over frivolous patent suits? When the idiocy begins to hurt the idiot who are so successful at lobbying Washington and other capitals around the world, THEN we might see some sanity forced into patent law.
Really, I want another dozen such suits brought against Microsoft quickly. Each one of them worth a billi
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ofcourse there is the risk that MS will simply buy this company so that they can use the patent themselves...
Re:Texas? You Don't Say! (Score:4, Informative)
What do you mean by "all of its"? Do you know how many software patent cases Microsoft has been the plaintiff in before the TomTom case? Zero. (And BTW, Texas was convenient for TomTom, as that's where they have filed many of their suits against competing GPS companies).
Oh, and defendants have been winning more than plaintiffs in the Eastern District of Texas since early 2007.
Parent
What about Open Office (Score:2)
Re:What about Open Office (Score:5, Informative)
Aren't all the ODF documents just XML documents?
No, they're compressed XML documents.
How much does Open Office have to pay for each download?
If this ruling stands for them too, still nothing. They just won't let you download in the US. Free Software has no jurisdiction.
Parent
Re:What about Open Office (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. And any Open Office developers who happen to live in the U.S. - whose coding would be subject to U.S. patents - would do what exactly to avoid their liability for infringing the patent? And even if we pretend (as TFS seems to imply, incorrectly) that patent damages somehow have to be tied to a count of distributed copies, and that OO could cut off U.S. distribution, how would the cover the damages for copies already distributed in the U.S.?
If the patent applies to what OO is doing, it would be a big problem for the project.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Neat.
Not good, just neat.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And any Open Office developers who happen to live in the U.S. - whose coding would be subject to U.S. patents - would do what exactly to avoid their liability for infringing the patent?
Stop contributing. Where is it written, that OOo has to have contributors from the US? There will be others. And I'm sure the courts would appreciate the fact that they stopped upon finding out about the infringement.
Also, the fact that they sued the richest software company in the world does not imply they'll go after individuals.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As any lawyer will tell you, don't go after the guilty - go after the ones with the deepest pockets.
Re:What about Open Office (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's an issue of editing XML documents in the sense of using XML to store structured data (such as Ooo documents), then the patent should be overturned. The whole point of XML is to provide a generic (and thereby obvious) means of structuring and editing data.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
The whole point of XML is to provide a generic (and thereby obvious) means of structuring and editing data.
Not to mention ODF is an international standard, so any US patent should in my opinion be null and void. Of course that's common sense, so likely not true.
Re:What about Open Office (Score:4, Interesting)
The use of XML for documents may postdate the patent, but text processing systems that separate document structure from details of formatting go back at least to the late 1970s in the form of Brian Reid's Scribe. Unless I have misunderstood the patent, this constitutes prior art.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If You Have a Repeat Offender, Increase Penalty? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well--and I stress that I am not defending this ruling--you could look at it like raising the stakes involved since there are so many patent cases.
... maybe they are just on their way to try to get all these patent cases prevented?
Example: You steal a piece of fruit. You are convicted in front of a jury and slapped on the wrist. So you and everyone else does it again tomorrow. To combat this they increase the penalty to a $70 fine and 4 days in jail. In an ideal world, people stop stealing fruit.
Of course, I'm told hands get chopped off for stealing in some countries (could be wrong on that one though). I do know in Texas they're not opposed to electrocutin' ya for certain offenses though
Doesn't make a lick of sense at all considering you can't throw a goddamn progress bar [edn.com] on your application without risking litigation.
Filed in 1994 (Score:3, Interesting)
Granted in 1998.
It took them that long to sue MS?
Re:Filed in 1994 (Score:5, Informative)
So Basically the company was able to present evidence that Microsoft intentionally reviewed, and then disregarded the patent and implemented the same feature as the patent holder tried to sell them. That probably didn't sit very well with the jury. Microsoft should have been a good citizen and tried to strike down the ridiculous patent, rather than just ignore it and hope for the best.
Parent
Re:Filed in 1994 (Score:4, Informative)
The patent claims (which define the scope of the patent) are easier to read after going through the specification a bit more closely. This patent is about a particular method of encoding structured data.
Consider the example (given in the patent) of <Chapter><Title>The Secret Life of Data</Title><Para>Data is hostile. </Para>The End</Chapter>. Typical parsers would encode this as some kind of tree.
This patent teaches coding it by creating a "Metacode Map" with six elements encoded as {Element Number, Element, Character Position}: ({1, <Chapter>, 0}, {2, <Title>, 0}, {3, </Title>, 23}, {4, <Para>, 23}, {5, </Para>, 23}, {6, </Chapter>, 46}). The content is then stored separately as one long strong: "The Secret Life ofDataData is hostile. The End"
I haven't read the claims closely enough to say whether they are consistent with the teachings of the patent, but it does seem to be narrower than simply editing XML (or SGML). I also suspect that there aren't a whole lot of infringers since this is an unusual way encoding marked up language. Does Word do this? The jury though so, but the code is all under seal, so it is a bit difficult to check out independently.
Parent
Patent Makes My Head Asplode (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.google.com/patents?id=y8UkAAAAEBAJ&dq=5787449 [google.com]
I have no idea what this patent is saying.
Abstract:
A system and method for the separate manipulation of the architecture and content of a document, particularly for data representation and transformations. The system, for use by computer software developers, removes dependency on document encoding technology. A map of metacodes found in the document is produced and provided and stored separately from the document. The map indicates the location and addresses of metacodes in the document. The system allows of multiple views of the same content, the ability to work solely on structure and solely on content, storage efficiency of multiple versions and efficiency of operation.
It sounds a bit like an embedded XSLT, more or less. Maybe?
Re: (Score:2)
Just from reading the abstract, it sounds more like templating -- I know the basic structure of your format, so I can go in and replace the strings (content) between the parts that are structural. Or, to modify the template, I could hide the content, and allow you to modify just the structural part ... and I could present it in any number of ways to allow you to edit it.
XSLT is more one-directional, and there isn't the mapping made to relate how things go back into the original file.
Re:Patent Makes My Head Asplode (Score:5, Funny)
When reading patents, you always ignore most of the boilerplate and preamble. Just go for the Claims section.
In this case, Claim 1 is quite understandable:
1. A computer system for the manipulation of the architecture and content of a document having a plurality of metacodes and content by producing a first map of metacodes and their addresses of use in association with mapped content; said system comprising:
metacode map distinct storage means;
means for providing a menu of metacodes to said metacode storage means;
and means for compiling said metacodes of the menu by locating, detecting and addressing the metacodes in the document to constitute the map and storing the map in the metacode storage means; and
means for resolving the content and the metacode map into the document.
Parent
Re:Patent Makes My Head Asplode (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As a sad commentary on the state of the patent system, your convoluted description of coffee was easier to follow than most patent applications.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds like any type of stylesheet-based editing.
That means office suites, HTML editors, vector graphics editors are all "infringing".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
$98 isnt alot compared to RIAA/etc (Score:2)
That makes sense... (Score:2)
Re:That makes sense... (Score:5, Interesting)
You're joking, right? I develop an XML editor as my living, so I'm more than passingly familiar with this topic. Generating XML is on the order of a few hundred lines of code. A proper, full XML parser is on the order of 100,000 lines of code. The xerces source code is over 300,000 lines of code - there's a reason for that - does that sound "simple" to you? Even the simplest of XML parsers (and even if you only a tiny subset of XML) is orders of magnitude more complex and time-consuming than merely generating XML, which is trivial. Sure there's "very specific documentation" - so what? Have you even looked at that specification? The full specification is large. Having "very specific documentation" for something has nothing to do with difficulty of implementation (I'm sure there's "very specific documentation" for wiring a 747 too). And a parser has to handle so many more cases than a generator. And is much more work to test. For reasonably simple cases, you can write a generator that can generate a valid fairly complex XML document in under an hour. Good luck writing a proper XML parser in under an hour for an XML document of the same complexity.
Parent
Must Be East Texas (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Anyone ever realize that maybe Texas should succeed?
I bet Texas already thinks they are successful. Did you mean secede? http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/secede [merriam-webster.com]
Windows 7 ships without notepad (Score:2)
Saves you $100 in a blink of an eye :)
Patent awards out of sync with reality? Hardy! (Score:3, Funny)
Are you aware of how much genius it takes to come up with the idea of first parsing the XML file into an internal in-memory format, editing that, then flattening that back to an XML file? Nobody would have done anything different than re-parsing and modifying the XML every time a minor change was made in the editor, if it weren't for this insightful patent.
Ridiculous. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is just ridiculous.
The patent would apply to any markup language. This is totally obvious and there are many implementations which have been around for more than 25 years.
There are several errors here.
1) the patent should not have been granted because to do something like this is obvious.
2) the court must be totally incompetent.
3) the defense must be incompetent as well.
Any database driven web page is an infringement. It doesn't need to be XML. In fact most databases have this and Oracle is an example. PostgreSQL also has tools which do this.
Any templating software does this.
This illustrates just how bad the USA patent system is.
I hope it goes to appeal and that this gets straightened out. The thing is we software developers are under attack these days We will find that the 3rd world will eventually do all our software development. I know I would not go into software development if I were back in my university days. If a person does anything of any significance they can expect to be sued. No other profession that I know of is attacked as we software developers are being attacked.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Defense does not necessarily need to be incompetent. As long as the accuser can demonstrate that the patent applies, defense has no choice, until the patent used itself is invalidated, which is not easy. (Remember that one-click shopping patent of Amazon).
I've only seen one recent case of Microsoft using patents against competition (FAT vs TomTom). However, every year they have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to unknown companies. Especially the Eolas case was ridiculous, and those money, unfortunate
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Fair Play (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite how one feels against M$, this is ridiculous.
It is not fair at all and could be used against other software with similar capabilities.
Parent
Re:Fair Play (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Can we organize a virtual million man march and get the patent system fixed?
We could start a Facebook group!
Re: (Score:2)
Neither do I. However, in the end, who ends up paying $98/copy to i4i?
I'll give you a hint -- it's not Microsoft.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
But I was not Microsoft so I laughed at the irony.
Re: (Score:2)
Big? Yes. Innocent? Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha.