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."

Wheel

Patent on the wheel can't be long in coming.

Re:Wheel

You might find this [bbc.co.uk] interesting.

Re:Wheel

Patent on the wheel can't be long in coming.

That would save the trouble of having to re-invent it.

Linux ?

Linus should patent both RSS and Atom in Linux before anyone else does.

Winer claims to have invented RSS....

and nobody has bothered to dispute it because who the hell would want to claim such a convoluted design as their own?

Aw, but... but.....

Everyone was so *happy* when they decided to actually play nice and use an established icon [slashdot.org] for RSS.

Why would they turn around and piss everyone off?
WHY??

Oh wait... it's MS. Nevermind. Business as usual.

so hey.. does this mean Firefox will have to exclude that feature in upcoming Vista builds?

I can see it now:

#ifndef _MS_VISTA_ // patent crap.
Links.AddLiveBookmark();
#endif

Oh Yeah?!

Well I'm going to patent the 8.3 naming convention in the FAT filesystem! How do you like THEM apples?

Re:Oh Yeah?!

but them Apples don't even use 8.3 file names...

Who has Microsoft actually sued

over patent infringement? Actual cases and not the 'OMG they might sue us' screeching please.

Re:Who has Microsoft actually sued

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

Re:Who has Microsoft actually sued

"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

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.

Re:Who has Microsoft actually sued

Who has N. Korea actually nuked? Actual cases and not the 'OMG they might nuke us' screeching please.

Re:they don't have to

So you are saying your inability to cite an instance of Microsoft suing, or even threatening to sue is clear evidence that this is exactly what Microsoft are actually doing. Thats just fucking brilliant. Rumsfeldian logic at its best.

Patents are Never Defensive

If you want only to defend your right to use something patentable, you just publish in a journal held by a number of libraries. IBM's Invention Disclosure Bulletin is an example of this. They publish everything they think might be patentable, but not worth the time and expense to patent.

That is not patent for RSS

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

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

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]

Why the hullabaloo?

MS is patenting their implementation of RSS in IE. Not RSS. If you want to come up with a way of interacting with MS SQL server that is novel, you can patent it. If you want to patent a novel way of attaching a wheel to a car, you may. Remember, it doesn't have to be useful, the best way, or practical, it just has to be novel, or an improvement upon an method.

While I love RSS and all, Winer has a history of being a whiner in this matter when it comes to ATOM and RSS. Almost as bad as Reese Sellin was with his ill conducted projected [wikipedia.org].

Patent Interference, Litigation, and 102(b)

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.

Hmm, I wonder...

I can't say I'm sure why Microsoft patent RSS-in-IE7, but I still hear Admiral Ackbar breathing behind me...

Why?

I fail to see any positive outcomes for any party for Microsoft patenting RSS for IE only. It's not like anybody else develops IE or something. The only way to infringe it would be to make a plugin for IE7 to do something it already does by itself.

I think I'll patent the door-knob in my house

Could I apply for and get a patent on door-knobs or maybe lightbulbs that only applies to items within my home? I own the home which is the same as owning an OS then patenting software that runs within that OS?

Then I could sue all the manufacturers of door-knobs and lightbulbs that I use in my home.... how could they dispute my claims? They don't have a patent for door-knobs "in my home" do they? I could even manufacture a door-knob and install it in my home as proof of concept.... they'd be infringing on my design.

Oh, the mistery

The big mystery is what Microsoft is planning to do with the patents if they are awarded them.

Wow. [pause] Wow. I'll take a stab at this one. They'll use it to... mmm... patents, patents... Ah! They'll use them to prohibit some party or parties to manufacture the software which is described in the patents' claims? Can I get a golden star for this one, please? It's long overdue.

They aren't patenting RSS

It seems to me after reading the patent application that they are trying to patent the API they created for allowing different programs within Vista (IE7, Outlook, etc) all share the same collection of feeds in various formats.

not Vista/IE7-specific

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

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.

Holy Silme, Batman!

Where's the guy who was asking why people hate MS? link [slashdot.org]. Case in point. Dave Winer post a question on the "personal blog" of MS's Emerging Business Team asking if MS would promise not to sue him if it gets these patents. As you can see here [typepad.com], there's no response. Silence is golden?

On the not-quite-so-paranoid hand...

Microsoft is probably trying to avoid another Eolas fiasco. Microsoft has already been stung by the US patent insanity, and with their patent tied explicitly to Vista and IE, there's not really much harm they can do with it. And as a web developer whose had to deal with the fallout of the Eolas case, I actually find myself supporting Microsoft when they're trying to avoid it happening again. I certainly don't want to have to find another crappy javascript hack to work around a stupid, obvious patent.

How Microsoft Does Patents

This is how Microsoft does patents. They don't file for a generic patent that covers everything for every purpose of a technology, but they file patents for this that are specific to the technology that they have produced - be it IE, Windows or .Net. This seems to be a defensive play to protect what they see as their IP, and anyone who may try and implement their technology away from Windows.

The hoo ha over patents with Mono is a good example, and is something that just hasn't been taken into account by those people at all. Microsoft has patented, or applied for patents, to a lot of concepts, technology and APIs that the patents make clear are specific to .Net - that can be implemented in the CLR and are applicable to the ECMA specs they laid down. This means that if you were to pull some concepts and ideas out of .Net and apply them to Java, you'd be OK, but woe betide you if you want to try and make anything compatible with what Microsoft is doing.

Ulterior motive / cynical conspiracy theory post

I'll work off the assumption there has to be some financial and or control related gain to this or they wouldn't do it.

MS's market dominance will ensure Vista and IE7 will become the majority OS & browser rig over time this patented RSS aggregation / delivery API system will be part of it.

The patent states "the platform can acquire and organize web content, and make such content available for consumption by many different types of applications" so it would be fair to assume that over time more Windows applications will work with the feeds via this mechanism. I'm sure they'll do their utmost to make it nice and easily accessible through development tools, etc.

MS are setting themselves up as a vital link in the RSS supply chain; the toll bridge troll as it were. With sufficient install base and support by Windows applications there are lots of things Microsoft could do. This being /. I'm obligated to mention the evil ones I've thought of so far.

1. Microsoft don't own the RSS format and can't dictate how it's run. After a while of this mechanism being in place a new patented and big media friendly format could be introduced and promoted to the detriment of RSS. To the applications using the mechanism, and thus the end users, all this is transparent. MS then have a format they can control.

2. They could throw lawyers at anyone who produced a similar system for other operating systems.

3. They could add to this mechanism a way to make some feeds chargeable through a standard payment system.

Some clarification about the matter

For the I-never-read-the-source-luke-department members, I add here what I deposited on the original site; hoping to clarify the matter:

"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."

I am very unclear what makes the author of the blog think this ? I read the claims - and that is what counts in a patent, only - and can't find anything that points to Vista. The only technical feature the claims talk about is the feature mentioned mainly in claim 10: reading RSS by an application that generically cannot read it. That is meant with the plurality of applications in claim 1.

Therefore what the patent proposes is *not* to patent RSS, but to patent the rocket-science-like concept of getting the RSS as is (that is, again, *not* patenting it), and miraculously translate it ('API') to be used in other applications.
To me, the patent is written very clearly and rather concisely. If you now read the blog again, alas, it doesn't really hit the problem and the consequences right between the eyes.

The question are basically two:
1. For patentability, it must be made sure, that nobody has proposed to use RSS for a plurality of 'drains', applications, that do not natively 'speak' RSS, before the filing date, June 21, 2005.
2. For business reasons, one needs to evaluate the value of a patent that prevents others from using RSS for other applications; like importing it into a media player. Obviously, there is a nice stranglehold that the patent offers to the owner against competitors.

And let me add some more remarks here for Slashdot raeders:

Sure, the whole thing is probably crap. As much crap as the Slashdot title "Microsoft Applies to Patent RSS in Vista". AFAIK, there are browsers (claim 19), media players (claim 20) and e-mail (claim 18) in non-Microsoft products as well ;)
Dave Winer is wrong just as well; there is no single attack on RSS in the patent. Anyone who just reads RSS in an RSS-reader will be able to do so in future. But beware the patent is granted (and I bet the dimwits in USPTO will grant it), and you write and sell an application that extracts RSS feeds into a set of hierachical folders (claim 8), that reside on the machine and are queried by a browser, media player or e-mail client; and you'll be tossed.
Actually, the only thing that I personally find 'clever' in this application (and I am *not* an RSS person), is the setup of these hierarchical folders. Because one can mirror RSS-content locally, any content, within topical folders, and then query these folders for content; like media player for latest on movies (and then offer the movie through your media player); browser for news (and then offer the news feeds contained in the RSS); and so forth.

The end of BP&J

If things keep going like this they'll end up patenting peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! [itworld.com]

Patent Law

Urm . .forgive my poor understanding (1 module of a multi-dispicplinary degree) of Law, and patent law in particular but

1) You can't patent something that is already in the public domain (as Vista is)
2) You can't patent something that is already in the public domain (as RSS is)

So how the heck do they expect to be able to patent an application of two specific items?

Oh .. of course I forgot. Those nice people at the US Patent Bureau.

Has anyone REALLY read the patent applcation?

IANAL, but this sounds like they are planning to make an API for "msRSS", that is: to embrace&extend RSS into a patented, proprietary, "common format" for IE/Outlook/WMP/etc... This would of course lock in their "email/web browser/media player applications", which could help in squashing Firefox,Eudora/Thunderbird,VLC and other "pests", not to mention that it could harm the real RSS because everyone's using msRSS.

How's this for a conspiracy theory?
Some key points from the patent, severely stripped:
1. ... implement: an RSS platform that is configured to receive and process RSS data ... to enable different types of applications to access RSS data that has been received and processed by the RSS platform.
3. The system of claim 1, ... to receive and process RSS data in multiple different formats, ... configured to convert the multiple different formats into a common format.
10. ... a set of APIs ... that enable at least one application to access RSS data that has been processed and stored in a feed store; and wherein said at least one application does not understand an RSS format ...
18-20. The system of claim 10, wherein said at least one application comprises an email/web browser/media player application.

Prior Work ??

http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

From reading the patent it seems to me Magpierrs is prior work.

Re:Weakened Arguments

this is a nothing-burger

I'll have ketchup, and relish, and... oh hell, just make it all-dressed please. :)

Wake up, & smell the prison-coffee

Hope you didn't want to use anything but IE-7 for RSS under VISTA. Looks to me like Opera, Firefox, and everything else will be legally locked out. Or looked at the other way if you want to enjoy RSS you will have to use IE-7. If MS gets the patent(s) they are not required to license them to anyone for any price --any price whatsoever. That's the minimum. The worst-case scenario is to make it illegal to access RSS with anything but VISTA & IE-7. Of course, such an abomination won't bother the Microsoft-worshipers, will it?