Office applications Toolkit
Story: Microsoft slammed over XML patent
Posted by: Cirilo Bernardo (Thursday 2 June 2005, 12:24 AM)
Well, it's not the end of XML for storing objects just yet. Don't forget that this only applies in the USA (and Australia, which is bound by treatises to uphold US patents). Besides, having been granted the patent is not the end of things. All we need is someone with the resources to mount a patent challenge (for example, look at what happened to MS's patent on the FAT filesystem). Unfortunately this means that someone has to 1) actually obtain a copy of and read the patent, 2) Discover prior art which was public knowledge (woohoo - aren't you glad we have SourceForge?) and 3) write a letter to the patent office informing them of their mistake and asking them to review the patent with the evidence you present. Now if you're lucky the patent office will investigate and then invalidate the patent. If you're not so lucky the patent office will investigate and then call in Microsoft and your party in an attempt to sort things out - this part could be incredibly costly. If you didn't do a decent research job then the patent office can uphold the claim and you just made it tougher for the next person in line to challenege the patent.
Full Talkback thread
Story: Microsoft slammed over XML patent
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Where's the liability for awarding wrong patents? Arthur B. -
there is none
this spells the end for XML Anonymous
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Well, it's not the end of XML for storing obj... Cirilo Bernardo -
XML was born as a particular format for data stora... Anonymous
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It just seems people who review patents at patent... Roderick Klein
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Whatever happened to prior art?
I worked as a pate... Anonymous
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To be fair to the patent office in this case... Wookey
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The link in the article points to the wrong patent... Bill Price
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Thanks for pointing that out Bill. I have up... Ingrid Marson
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The United States Patent office merely takes the p... Thomas J. Mousseau
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I am sorry to disagree, as most people don't... John Washington
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geez louise... they're expecting folks to just see... c r vrij
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isn't a software company supposed to make mon... ivan tonchev
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Look at http://sourceforge.net/projects/sxp - isn'... Anonymous
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I worked for Bowstreet. We were serializing commu... Anonymous
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Would this mean that C++ or other programming lang... Anonymous
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At this rate, I soon will not be able to init... S. Johnson
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It's a variable. Could represent anythin... Chris -
I know the US patent system is based on grant firs... Andrew Evans
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