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Texas Judge Bans Microsoft From Selling Word in the U.S.
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Comments (22)
Does this affect OO.o?
It seems if this affects OOXML it would also affect ODF.
I imagine that it would to the extent that OOo reads and writes OOXML. The more important question is whether the patent will hold up in another court. The fruit cake parading as a judge in this case sides with anything that looks like a patent.
From the (scanty) description of the claim, it sounds like OOo could be vulnerable as well.
Note that the patent predates OOXML and is not OOXML specific.
Note that the patent predates OOXML and is not OOXML specific.
Quoting:The fruit cake parading as a judge in this case sides with anything that looks like a patent.
East Texas; 'nuff said.
I read some of the comments on the Dailytech article and some people were saying that CSS would also fall under this patent and that CSS is from the 70s. If that is the case why didn't MS use it in their defence?
"why didn't MS use it in their defence"
If Microsoft use anything like that in their defense, they are pretty much admitting that their own patent extortion efforts are a load of poo. It's a weird situation this puts them in.
If Microsoft use anything like that in their defense, they are pretty much admitting that their own patent extortion efforts are a load of poo. It's a weird situation this puts them in.
The patent mentions SGML, but not XML; kinda funny.
Patent was granted in 1998, and was probably applied for at least a year, maybe more, before that. The folks drafting the application certainly began in 1996 at the latest.
XML was developed between 1996 and 1998, so, in the timeline of this patent, there really wasn't any XML to mention.
XML was developed between 1996 and 1998, so, in the timeline of this patent, there really wasn't any XML to mention.
That has got to be a bad patent...
It's silly of me to say so without reading the actual claim, but...
AHEM!!
Separating presentation and content is not unique to word.
There is, for example, this little thing called the world wide web, which supports content with HEADERS! and presentation stored elsewhere to be applied via stylesheets.
At least several of the old (DOS era) word processor combined markup and text in a file, but kept them seperately.
Hey! Doesn't pdf do something like that?
I'm a thinkin' somebody's got a patent that should never have been issued.
AHEM!!
Separating presentation and content is not unique to word.
There is, for example, this little thing called the world wide web, which supports content with HEADERS! and presentation stored elsewhere to be applied via stylesheets.
At least several of the old (DOS era) word processor combined markup and text in a file, but kept them seperately.
Hey! Doesn't pdf do something like that?
I'm a thinkin' somebody's got a patent that should never have been issued.
> I'm a thinkin' somebody's got a patent that should never have been issued.
What a surprise...
What a surprise...
I followed the patent link - it mentions troff, Microsoft's RTF and SGML which is the more generalized superset of XML in a section titled "BACKGROUND TO THE INVENTION". Incredible, they mention all the prior art.
I can't see any value in their metacode maps, unless you want to update two files every time you update the document content.
I can't see any value in their metacode maps, unless you want to update two files every time you update the document content.
Agreed, this is a really stupid thing. Somewhere in Microsoft headquarters, some high level suits are cursing software patents right now.
I'd applaud this excercise of bad karma, but really we need to get rid of these dubious patents. And not based on prior art or any such things, but purely based on the fact that some thing just aren't all that patentable to begin with. Time to sue the US Govt- ?
I'd applaud this excercise of bad karma, but really we need to get rid of these dubious patents. And not based on prior art or any such things, but purely based on the fact that some thing just aren't all that patentable to begin with. Time to sue the US Govt- ?
Is this for real?
@chalbersma It was in the Austin American-Statesman this morning on the Business page...
@jacog As many times as they've been burned rather than helped by software patents, it is amazing that the thick heads in management at companies like Microsoft aren't the ones crusading to abolish software patents. If I was an MS shareholder, I'd be kind of angry about the amount of money that Microsoft spends filing for defensive patents, fighting to defend their patents or fighting against their infringements of others patents. The percentage of time their legal department must spend on it can't be inconsequential, plus it is a diversion of focus for a lot of their employees from the top to upper management that is probably costing them as well.
As much as they seem to like to use threats over patents against others like Linux vendors, I would hazard to guess that in the long term net patents cost MS more than they gain...
As much as they seem to like to use threats over patents against others like Linux vendors, I would hazard to guess that in the long term net patents cost MS more than they gain...
There are several ways for MS to cure from bad patents:
1) They should sit around the table with the pharma-companies to solve this isuse. Microsoft and their competitors want patent reform, pharma doesn't. 2) They should try to make software patents invalid. However, when that happens, lots of their so called 'IP' "vaporizes" (in reality it doesn't because it never was a concrete physic 'posession' in first place). That would diminish the assumed value of the company as a whole, and also its stocks. So that means they'd have to explain to their shareholders (and the rest of the world) that deleting patents from their IP list doesn't mean losing any 'assumed' money (which might never have been there in first place), but saving _real_ 'legal' money. However, the second solution also entails admitting the patent part of their 'IP' never had much value in first place, and their "property" contained a big bubble not worth anything. That means admitting they mislead their stockholders. Probably some of the 'dumb' stockholders (those who really thought the patents had real value) might sue them over it.
Both are not going to happen soon.
Even more, the patent system benefits large companies and discriminate small companies. Small companies can't join the patent-batttle, while a company such as Microsoft will probably spend as much money on patents as they gain. Even if Microsoft loses some money on the patent game, that probably is more beneficial to them than allowing small companies to compete on their products.
1) They should sit around the table with the pharma-companies to solve this isuse. Microsoft and their competitors want patent reform, pharma doesn't. 2) They should try to make software patents invalid. However, when that happens, lots of their so called 'IP' "vaporizes" (in reality it doesn't because it never was a concrete physic 'posession' in first place). That would diminish the assumed value of the company as a whole, and also its stocks. So that means they'd have to explain to their shareholders (and the rest of the world) that deleting patents from their IP list doesn't mean losing any 'assumed' money (which might never have been there in first place), but saving _real_ 'legal' money. However, the second solution also entails admitting the patent part of their 'IP' never had much value in first place, and their "property" contained a big bubble not worth anything. That means admitting they mislead their stockholders. Probably some of the 'dumb' stockholders (those who really thought the patents had real value) might sue them over it.
Both are not going to happen soon.
Even more, the patent system benefits large companies and discriminate small companies. Small companies can't join the patent-batttle, while a company such as Microsoft will probably spend as much money on patents as they gain. Even if Microsoft loses some money on the patent game, that probably is more beneficial to them than allowing small companies to compete on their products.
@hkwint I'm not sure that patents universally help big companies more than little ones. Some of the most offensive patent trolls are relatively small, especially compared to MS. How big is the Canadian outfit involved in this case? I'd never heard of them before...
A follow-up:
[url=http://www.dailytech.com/I4I Says Its Not Out to Destroy Microsoft Word With Sales Ban/article15967.htm]http://www.dailytech.com/I4I Says Its Not Out to Destroy Mic...[/url]
Quoting:Now i4i's Chairman Loudon Owen is speaking up and says he isn't looking to kill Word with the injunction or start a legal war with Microsoft. He says the injunction is all about his company getting its fair share of the profits on a technology it developed.
@jezuch In other words they just want to extort Microsoft...
I'm torn... while karmatically Microsoft so justly deserves to get screwed... I hate software patents in general and wish they'd all go away...
I'm torn... while karmatically Microsoft so justly deserves to get screwed... I hate software patents in general and wish they'd all go away...
@softwarejanitor: I'm torn too on a poetic justice level but on a quantitative level I'm worried. A patent troll is a mosquito to a beast the size of MicroSoft. But they are a vampire to the kind of small Linux start-ups that have the potential to shake things up (i.e. innovate).
Entrenched interests like MicroSoft can't get away from the "pay money for a program.exe" business model while small companies are happy to grow a new model like web services and cloud computing.
Entrenched interests like MicroSoft can't get away from the "pay money for a program.exe" business model while small companies are happy to grow a new model like web services and cloud computing.
They're vampires to Microsoft as well. The 200 (now 290) million is nothing. But not being allowed to sell Word costs them much, much more!
Colour me confused, but I went to look at the details of the patent, and it is listed as "withdrawn"... - eh?
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