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I was distracted when this turned up yesterday, so I didn't look at
it, but I did this morning. The reporting makes it appear that these
patent applications (conducted in Europe and New Zealand) apply only
to MS Office's (Word's) handling of XML, in 31 specific claims, most
of which do look patentable merely from the aspect of being
Word-specific. The other arguments for using substitution of XML,
XHTML, etc. aren't needed, and don't affect the base argument.
While this has implications, I don't necessarily see any great reason
to get in a swivet about it. If Microsoft wants to paint themselves
into a corner, that's fine with me. If they want to make it more
expensive to convert Word documents into XML that is useful outside
the MS closed universe, it seems like another argument to excuse
ourselves from the thicket. Personally I think a better case could be
made for forcing Word into the public domain on the basis of its
widespread installation using the argument that they have made it an
unavoidable monopoly through their illegal business practices.
I know that's a non-starter, but getting it talked about might be
interesting. A more practical approach would be for the open
source/open standards community to develop a community converter
application that is bullet-proof (lawyer proof) that takes any word
processing document and converts it into raw text and then produces a
generic XML candidate version which Word users could then approve or
change through the converter application to a candidate version that
they can approve. They can then publish both the Word version for the
community that wishes to use the MS suite and the raw text/XML
version or an Open Office version. It would take a while to get
comfortable with such a wasteful system, but it would at least offer
an alternative to bending the knee to MS and it would help ensure
that XML doesn't become a de facto MS property.
Ciao,
Rex
At 6:36 PM +1100 1/24/04, Doug Hudgeon wrote:
>It would need to be marked up though to be patentable:
>
><CogentListArgument temperature="nonFlaming">
> Text of Argument
></CogentListArgument>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: John Cowan [mailto:cowan@mercury.ccil.org]
>Sent: Saturday, 24 January 2004 5:30 PM
>To: Bob Wyman
>Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
>Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Microsoft files for XML patents, says C|Net
>
>Bob Wyman scripsit:
>
>> There has been a rash of patents applied for and granted
>> recently whose only differentiation from the prior art is that the
>> call for encoding data using HTML, XHTML or XML. In many cases, the
>> "process" being patented is exactly like others that have been long in
>> use, the only difference is the encoding format. The Microsoft
>> patent[2] that Tim Bray pointed to in his note falls largely in this
>> class. If you substitute "ASN.1" for the occurrences of XML and/or XSD
>> in this patent, you'll see that prior art extends back to 1982 or so
>> -- especially since, "ASN.1 is an XML schema language." [1] Thus,
>> using ASN.1, rather than XSD, I could produce a system which is
>> effectively identical to that in the Microsoft patent application by
>> simply translating the XSD into ASN.1. Would this mean that I could
>> get a patent on such a system? Or, if I translated the schema to
>> RelaxNG or Schematron that I could get additional patents? Based on
>> current patent office practice, it seems like the answer is "Yes."
>> However, this is clearly wrong.
>
>There's no reason you couldn't get a patent on this very argument:
>it's sufficiently "novel and useful" to pass muster, apparently.
>
>--
>"By Elbereth and Luthien the Fair, you shall jcowan@reutershealth.com
>have neither the Ring nor me!" --Frodo http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
>
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--
Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com
Email: rexb@starbourne.com
Tel: 510-849-2309
Fax: By Request
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