SA Linux professionals ready for patent showdown
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In June this year, University of South Africa senior lecturer, Bob Jolliffe, served patent "request to surrender" papers on Microsoft's legal representatives in South Africa, urging the software company to give up its patent on wordprocessor documents stored in a single XML file. To date Jolliffe has The patent (ZA200303346), titled "Word processing document stored in a single XML file that may be manipulated by applications that understand XML", implies that Microsoft invented the idea and method of XML word-processing, an absurd claim according to critics around the globe, but one which passed through unchallenged at South Africa's patent office. In South Africa, patent applications are not examined for their novelty or inventiveness by the patent office. It is up to members of the public to challenge a patent, during its up to 20-year lifespan, before it is subjected to review. If the patent is left unchallenged, it could prevent later versions of open source wordprocessors from working with Microsoft Word documents created in XML.
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