Microsoft Patents XML Word Processing Documents 357
theodp writes "Embrace. Extend. Patent. On Tuesday, Microsoft was granted US Patent No. 7,571,169 for its 'invention' of the Word-processing document stored in a single XML file that may be manipulated by applications that understand XML. Presumably developers are protected by Microsoft's 'covenant not to sue,' so the biggest question raised by this patent is: How in the world was it granted in light of the 40-year history of document markup languages? Next thing you know, the USPTO will give Microsoft a patent for Providing Emergency Data in XML format. Oops, too late."
Won't hold up (Score:5, Insightful)
Xtend, Mbrace, Litigate? (Score:5, Insightful)
That one I could see them getting a patent on, but on something that uses the abbreviation for "eXtensible Markup Language"?
Extending the use of it is what it was designed to do in the fist place.
What's wrong with America? (Score:5, Insightful)
Folks reading stories like these will simply conclude that America is on the wrong path. To be more accurate, I think folks at the patent office suffer from effects of "thought disorders."
Re:Won't hold up (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Won't hold up (Score:5, Insightful)
But it still costs a fortune to get it challenged. That is the real problem. It is an armsrace and the one with the biggest pocket wins. I wonder when this cold war bubble will burst.
Not another one of these (Score:0, Insightful)
Lots of companies have to get patents on everything just to protect themselves from lawyers. Deal with it. This is getting Old, Microsoft isn't the only entity that does it. You don't like it, change the system but quit with the obsessive observance of Microsoft patents. OR better yet, get rid of the real Patent trolls that put major companies on the defensive patent claim train.
WTF??? (Score:4, Insightful)
The very concept is ludicrous. We need to fire those people in the PTO, and replace them with homeless bums. At least they might get something right once in a while.
Re:two patent offices (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Won't hold up (Score:5, Insightful)
So why was it granted in the first place?
Because the Patent Office doesn't have enough computer geeks and is underfunded.
Re:Won't hold up (Score:5, Insightful)
All Adobe needs to do in the event of MS making them mad is to change Flash/PDF just enough that they don't work with old versions, and then refuse to port/support a Windows version.
Why would they do something that stupid? That would destroy 90% of their install base and thus ruin themselves.
As the developers / authors gradually move to the new standards, Windows gets further and further behind, and all they have is Silverlight and .doc files. That is not where MS wants to be.
No, if Adobe stopped supporting Windows, those developers would just drop it and thus Adobe would go bankrupt.
2004 called.. (Score:5, Insightful)
2004 called and it wants...etc.. you know the rest.
They filed this a long time ago, and of course for good reason as if they didn't some asshole little company would set up shop in east Texas and sue. As the kids say, don't hate the player hate the game. Our patent system is fucking retarded.
Re:What's wrong with America? (Score:1, Insightful)
Folks reading stories like these will simply conclude that America is on the wrong path.
I had already figured that one out. What with your bankrupt industry and endless unwinnable wars.
Re:Won't hold up (Score:5, Insightful)
It will never burst. We have seen scandal after scandal involving patents granted by the USPTO. Companies big and small have all been hit, hard, by patent trolls and anti-competitive litigation. We've seen products sunk and industries mired in doubt. We've seen farcical patents and US supreme court case. If there was an event that could have burst this bubble, it would have happened by now.
The USPTO is not going to stop granting these things. Industry is never going to become so irritated by the cons of the patent system that they give up the pros. Ordinary people are never going to let go of the illusion that one genius invention, with patent protection, will set them up for life. This system is deeplying ingrained, self sufficient and self perpetuating.
The patent system is not going to reform itself. Industry will not reform it. The public will not reform it. The legal system will not reform it. Patent holders will not reform it. Reform must come from an external source, powerful enough to completely reform the system. And so deeply rooted is the current regime that reform will be a very, very painful process. Frankly, I doubt modern America, along with many western nations, has the capacity to implement such a change, given its inability to reach national consensus on anything.
So, don't expect a great event that's going to topple the whole patent system. There's not going to be a some kind of Watergate or Pearl Harbour to shake the system to its foundations. Until reform comes alone, the patent system is going to continue in its current vein, come what may. And it will probably do so for a very, very long time.
Re:Not another one of these (Score:3, Insightful)
Look, you fucking retard, markup languages have been around longer than Bill Gates was stroking himself in front of computer. The whole point of markup languages like SGML, TeX, HTML and so forth was to construct fucking documents, you worthless piece of human filth. XML is simply one extrapolation of SGML, but the underlying concept, you piece of mentally handicapped excrement, is encapsulating documents and other data.
So fuck off you, you moronic turd. Quit defending a clearly fraudulently gained patent, you simpering piece of goose fuck leftovers.
Re:WTF??? (Score:4, Insightful)
What does XML being an open standard have to do with anything?
The fact that it was an open standard FOR REPRESENTING DOCUMENTS AS FILE CONTENTS so they can be MANIPULATED BY COMPUTER PROGRAMS should make it clear that representing a document as a single XML file and writing an editor to edit such documents were explicitly contemplated in the open standard. And the fact that the standard was open constitutes publishing this prior art.
If Microsoft came up with something novel, non-obvious, and useful ABOUT editing a document represented entirely within a single XML file they would be entitled to a patent on THAT ASPECT. But that doesn't constitute inventing the editing of XML document files in general and thus doesn't entitle them to such a patent.
Note that it's entirely possible that the slashdot article misrepresented what was patented. This has happened a lot in the past. So perhaps Microsoft did come up with some cuteness to include in an XML editor and that was what they patented.
But that would not make as big a splash on the Slashdot front page. B-)
Obvious (Score:1, Insightful)
Any sufficiently obvious technology is indistinguishable from innovation.
Re:Won't hold up (Score:3, Insightful)
No. The real problem is, that it was granted in the first place. And the real reason is, that the patent offices works under the control of a government, that has more revolving doors and "lobbys"* than the Internet Explorer has quirks, holes and bugs.
___
* Which suddenly became the word for an euphemistic view on the illegal bribery and disloyalty to the people, which in many countries are major crimes on the punishment level of murder.
Re:Won't hold up (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll agree with that.
However, was there ever a general-purpose Wordprocessor (that worked like Word, Wordperfect, OOo, etc) and that used SGML or another text-based markup language as its storage backend?
Re:How is any of this new? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Won't hold up (Score:5, Insightful)
This won't hold up if challenged, there is plenty of prior art.
I agree that it probably won't be upheld if challenged, but I don't think prior art will be the issue. I just looked at the references of the patent and it looks like it refers to a ton of what I would consider prior art (lots of AbiWord references for example). It would appear that the patent office saw this and concluded that this was different. Convincing a judge or jury that the patent office was wrong would be difficult.
Personally, I don't think this patent would meet the requirements of the recent Bilski [wikipedia.org] decision. This patent is just a way of storing data in a format that is specifically designed to store data. If that is a legit patent, then we will have an arms race where everyone tries to think of anything that could be stored in XML and try to get a patent before anyone thinks of it. (Phone books, recipes, code, test cases, GUI layouts, packet captures, code reviews, etc, etc).
Just goes to show you (Score:3, Insightful)
That anything can be bought.
Re:Won't hold up (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, spokes and cotton can't be used for everything. XML can store any type of data at all. Storing $x in XML is not creative or innovative, it is exactly what XML was designed to do.
Re:Won't hold up (Score:5, Insightful)
This won't hold up if challenged, there is plenty of prior art.
And what the hell difference does that make. They'll sue and the defendant will either have to settle or go out of business because:
A. There'll be an injunction against their product so they can't sell it.
B. Because it'll be made clear that the court battle will cost them loads more than fighting (Microsoft has billions for lawyers).
C. Microsoft will make the license terms so outrageous they have to fight and then Microsoft will break them with the legal battle.
D. They'll lose the court case because they are violating the patent even though it never should have been issued..
So far courts have assumed the validity of patents even when a preliminary review has found them invalid. It takes years at best to get a final invalidation of a patent and that can be extended by appeals and modifications of the claims and other legal tactics. By then any company that was fighting would be out of business for one or more of the above reasons.
Re:two patent offices (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't bother. Just overhaul the entire IP system. So far Trademarks is the only member of the three types of IP that doesn't with regularity make headlines with how broken it is.
I guess you've missed all the stories where sues for "breaching" their trademark? Here's a recent example [mtv.com]. Another that's been bought up on Slashdot is Nissan Motors vs Nissan Computer [wikipedia.org]. I agree that trademark law is the sanest of the three, but it still gets plenty of abuse.
AND another example of why Microsoftware has bugs (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically, the invention here is the inclusion of information that lets third-party programs better understand what to do with the format. You can imagine, for example, if HTML included something like this. The del ('strikethrough') tag might be written:
That code would allow a program that did not natively understand the tag to implement a simple version of it. The idea is to allow new features to be introduced into the format while enabling older versions of the software to use them without updating their code. The necessary code comes with the file.
In other words, it's a way to include executable code in one part of the file, and a call to it in another.
Presuming your characterization is correct, what Microsoft patented is a particular way to build an unpatchable security hole into an XML editor. B-)
not quite true (Score:5, Insightful)
Incorrect on both counts.
You need a degree in science or engineering to be an examiner, the examining corps has been hiring over 1200 examiners a year and fee diversion has ended.
The main problems for examiners has been lack of time (has not changed since 1976), a lack of an easy way to text search non-patent literature, increased number of claims, increased claim length, longer specifications, and more clerical tasks. Both the patent bar and the examiner unions want more time for examiners. Examiners do the best they can in the ~22 hours they have allocated for a case.
We will see what changes if Kappos (former head of IBM's IP dept) is approved by congress and takes over leadership of the USPTO.
Re:Stop the madness (Score:4, Insightful)
anger building... fury rising!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Software Engineer: "Hey look, I made this window open by using Ctrl-O. Neat huh?"
Manager/Lawyer/CFO/CEO: "Write it up! We'll corner the market on opening any windows! They'll be stuck! HA! Brilliant!"
Software Engineer: "What have I done... Oh well, where's the sysadmins? I must frag."
Software patents do not make sense in our current system. We crave competition, we need it. You build a brilliant program, I'll find someone who will one-up you. Don't worry, you get to fight back. Just make your program better/stronger/faster. That's how it works here.
First rule of 'Software Club': You don't fucking patent 'Software Club'.
[throws mic on floor]
Peace!
Re:two patent offices (Score:5, Insightful)
if it cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop, then spending $10K to get it patented (or whatever amount is appropriate) would be worth it. If you only spent $1000 to produce it, the dang thing shouldn't be patented anyway.
That's absurd. That would limiting the use of the patent system to large companies (the guys currently abusing the system) and completely destroy the notion of the independant inventor. Brilliant and patentable ideas don't have to be expensive.
Re:Won't hold up (Score:4, Insightful)
That's stupid, they should collect fees from the ones they reject too... And perhaps charge more when a single entity files multiple patents.
Maybe then they would be less over worked, and companies would have some incentive not to file every trivial thing in the hope of it sticking.
I mean, to a company now the choice is between "patent rejected, pay nothing" and "patent approved, pay for it", its a zero risk game that can result in significant benefits.
Re:What's wrong with America? (Score:5, Insightful)
3: What we suck at is leaving other countries to die.
Silly mistake you made there: "3: What we suck at is leaving other countries alone."
Re:How is any of this new? (Score:3, Insightful)
Then maybe the real story here is how Microsoft has extended XML to include non-standard features, which they can implement in their own software while restricting third parties from implementing the same features...
Isn't this basically the point of patents? To give inventors monopolies on their inventions for a limited time?
Re:Bad Summary (Score:1, Insightful)
The written description expands upon what hint elements mean: "hints are provided within the XML associated files providing applications that understand XML a shortcut to understanding some of the features provided by the word-processor. By using the hints, the applications do not have to know all of the specific details of the internal processing of the word-processor in order to recreate a feature."
Basically, the invention here is the inclusion of information that lets third-party programs better understand what to do with the format. You can imagine, for example, if HTML included something like this. The del ('strikethrough') tag might be written:
That code would allow a program that did not natively understand the tag to implement a simple version of it. The idea is to allow new features to be introduced into the format while enabling older versions of the software to use them without updating their code. The necessary code comes with the file.
Ah, prior art as in tags and attributes with similar functionality as "style" and "font" in (x)html. And to think that we we abandoned those in favor of external CSS, XML-schemes or just old fashioned DTDs.
I'm not sure when Netscape Composer started to use x(ht)ml instead of html, but it should predate the filing of this patent with a couple of years.
Re:Won't hold up (Score:4, Insightful)
So they've patented a very specific DTD?
go go Microsoft... that's what you get for spending all your money buying new chairs instead of hiring talented people