how does an open xml format infringe on anything? what information is this article missing?

WTF??

XML is a fee-free open standard that many developers use.

According to the i4i site, the infringment is for:

Selling, offering to sell, and/or importing in or into the United States any Infringing and Future Word Products that have the capability of opening a .XML, .DOCX, or .DOCM file (“an XML file”) containing custom XML;
•
Using any Infringing and Future Word Products to open an XML file containing custom XML;
•
Instructing or encouraging anyone to use any Infringing and Future Word Products to open an XML file containing custom XML;
•
Providing support or assistance to anyone that describes how to use any infringing and Future Word Products to open an XML file containing XML; and
•
Testing, demonstrating, or marketing the ability of the Infringing and Future Word Products to open an XML file containing custom XML.

So basically ANY application that uses CUSTOM XML is a patent infringement??
How the FRELL did this patent get approved?

Every app that uses XML would fall under this claim.

There has got to be something that I am missing here.

It's about time! Since Office 2004 it's been using that format, giving no credit to the creators. I think Microsoft deserves this, they have been milking cash from something they didn't even create in the first place. All they made was the tools and the GUI, which seems pretty easy.

Infact, I feel they got off too easy, Office is a multi-billion dollar product, and 290 million is not that much compared to how much money they could have received...

It's the word "custom" that makes the difference.

And frankly, "irreparable harm" to Microsoft is just tough noogies. MS has caused irreparable harm to numerous competitors who were driven out of business by illegal marketing tactics, and MS has done irreparable harm to users of the Internet by creating methods for malware authors to easily take control of Windows PCs and create botnets, which are then used for spamming, DDoS, and other illegal attacks.

There would be a decade or so of gradual conversion from MS products to Mac and Free Open Source Software, but if MS were dissolved and out of business effective today, it wouldn't hurt anyone except MS stockholders.

Which is my selling any MSFT stock you have NOW might be smart.

OK, now that you are done spouting anger at MS....
The real point IS that the claim is that using CUSTOM XML is an infringement on their patent.

Yes, that money is nothing to MS and they are the big bad meanie...

But the implications APPEAR to cover all other developers and companies out there.
Their site says nothing about a custom xml document type...just any app that even opens or looks at custom xml.

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a set of rules for encoding documents electronically...thus, what developers create, is technically CUSTOM.

Hell, I create plenty of apps that use custom XML (again...a free-fee open standard).
Does that mean, that I have infringed on this companies patents?? That would be absurd.

Thats why I am hoping someone could shed some more insight instead of just bashing the evil MS corp.

It is custom in that it uses XML to store text formatting. i4i's patent is using two different files when dealing with formatting(one file for data and one for format) this is how the docx format works.

I think this lawsuit is idiotic, and why now? Office 2007 has been out for almost 3 years now, why did they decided to do this now? (I smell a conspiracy).

I won't claim to know the specifics of this, but I would find it odd that somehow Microsoft would just "miss" that someone holds a patent on something that they are going to spend millions developing and marketing.

And how could they violate it? Did they copy someone's source code verbatim? How did they even get it? Or was it such an obvious idea that everyone was going to do it which is why i4i put a patent on it in the first place?

Damn good thing they didn't have patent laws when they invented the wheel.

And Old Man Dotes - anti-microsoft sentiment aside, Microsoft going out of business would hurt a LOT of companies who would have to scramble to convert everything from desktops to ERP's. It would cost people billions of dollars they weren't otherwise going to spend on new software as well as invalidate the skill sets of hundreds of thousands who are practiced in Microsoft systems on an administrative level. And forget about the retraining time of any other staff you might have. Microsoft is dominant because people don't like to change what they have unless they have a real reason to. Even Vista wasn't enough to rock the boat. Most companies don't want to "experiment" with new software because there's no upside that justifies the cost.

If you think using the legal system as a clever way of circumventing market forces is a GOOD idea, I'm not even sure Apple or Red Hat would agree with you.

Patents have gotten way out of hand lately. You should not be able to patent things that are just common sense. Remember Creative suing Apple because Creative patented the idea of "Playlist"? Did you know Microsoft has a patent on Double Clicking on mobile phones?
Patent 5,443,036 is actually a patent of the idea of playing with your cat using a laser pointer... my mom is so going to jail. (I guess other animals are fine)

Oh yeah, I also hold a patent on replying to my own comments.

@Kon_Altor, I'm willing to bet that the suit has been in the pipeline for something between one and two full years already, maybe longer. Because the suit seems to have been filed in Canada people here in the US have probably not heard about it until now, but this sort of thing never happens quickly.

A search string "Microsoft lawsuit i4i" turns up information on Justia.com that the lawsuit was filed back in 2007. The case number, according to the same source, is 6:2007cv00113. If you want more details about what it's about, that's the place to look.

If the situation were reversed Microsoft would sue and win. So who really cares if they are the big dog, if they violate a patent they should deal with that problem.

That being said, nobody should be granted software patents, mathematics is in theory unpatentable. But somehow software falls outside this, even when it is explicitly mathematical algorithms that are being patented.

This is bad for all of society, copyrights are questionable enough on software, but at least have some legitimacy. Patents are inappropriate for software and genetics, and if it weren't for some poor precedents that have been set, would be off limits for patent.

This is beyond stupid. What it clearly shows is how drastic Patent laws need to be overhauled and retooled.

wtf?
someone probably already said this, but;
it's OPEN xml! as in OPEN SOURCE!
as in FREE!
as in IMPOSSIBLE TO INFRINGE UPON!
what the hell does i4i think they're trying to pull?

Well, thank god that I am not the only one that sees the issue with this patent case.

But I do want to stress, that although it seems bogus (as it currently appears)...we just may not know all the facts.

If this is truly a patent infringement over custom xml, then we got a problem since a ton of web apps utilize custom xml...rss feeds, email, twitter, facebook, and a butt-load of other web services.

I wonder if anyone has been able to really look into i4i's patent.

Well here is the patent:
http://www.google.com/patents?id=y8UkAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false

I'm not sure how much help it will be though. As near as I can tell (and I am not really sure I am reading it right) the patent is actually for using a seperate file (map) that shows your program where all special characters, tabs, bullets and such are.

I may be wrong, but I thought thats exactly how 2003 did things....

@Steel Fox...thanks for the link.

After looking at that...I am further convinced that the patent is bs and never should have been allowed (my opinion only of course).

It has a patent on the idea that you have content in one section (or file) and metacode that describes how it appears in another.

That is the whole concept behind XML (actually, SGML & even GML before it in the 60's).

Technically though...this means that a crap-load of apps are infringing on this so-called "patent" since any app that uses XML also uses the same principles layed down.

Still not sure how you can patent an open standard..but damn, lawyers have their work cut out for em.

It's like the drug company having a patent on human genes... absurd.

So if I develop a program that uses 2 XML files, one for metadata regarding display and another that contains the actual text data, I am now in violation of this patent?? Is that not VERY similar to the concept of html and css?
Kuh - Ray- Zee

to the person who believes this will bring a new age of open source format, you are terribly wrong. If this suit is succsessful its a huge hit and will hurt the open source community. The xml format is a open source program, and if i4i is able to put a patent on it, what is stopping people from putting patents on other future open source formats and then barring people from making applications with it. XML is in a way not much different from other fomats such as CSS. The assumption of the PC throne by apple would not help the opensource cause either, since the apple company as a whole is not as friendly to 3rd party software as microsoft is. The Microsoft company is the best hope for open-source programs, since it is built around 3rd party hardware and software (The computers are made by 3rd parties for one thing). The reason why there are viruses for the windows is a shining example of the ease of people to make 3rd party programs for the windows system.

It would probably be cheaper to just buy out the company vs. stop selling word or pay the company for each sale of the product.

From the page: "Will Microsoft stop selling Office over Word woes?"

Are you kidding? Of course they won't stop Office sales. Microsoft is worth well over 60 gigadollars. Any punitive damages against Microsoft would be a slap on the wrist at best. Anyone who has to ask that question doesn't know Microsoft and should stop being a tech blogger.

"wtf?
someone probably already said this, but;
it's OPEN xml! as in OPEN SOURCE!
as in FREE!
as in IMPOSSIBLE TO INFRINGE UPON!
what the hell does i4i think they're trying to pull?"

OOXML is hardly open. They can call it open all they want, but that doesn't make it so. It uses way too many proprietary extensions, the standard itself is a mess, and the only reason it was standardized was through bribery and commitee stacking.

In most circles, a standard can only be considered truly open when a committee of companies or organizations actually creates it. Since it was one publicly owned company convicted of being a monopoly, OOXML is nowhere near a genuinely open format.

On top of that, we never needed OOXML. We already HAD a genuinely open office format in ODF. And ODF was already better than what MS could offer in OOXML, we just never had any serious implementations of it until OOo 3.

And it's not "open source." There's no source code involved. OOXML is not a program. And Office (The only program to try to implement OOXML seriously) is very proprietary. Before you comment maybe you should make sure you know what the hell you're talking about.

Other examples of fake open standards of Microsoft's is .NET's CLI standard. ECMA was already demonstratively in Microsoft's pocket during the OOXML fiasco.

Markup languages have been used for centuries for formatting text, so there is nothing new there, no matter what appears before the letters ML. On the other hand, it is methods, not ideas that are patentable. I believe this was the reason that the icon litigation by Apple against Microsoft failed.

The only advantage I can see to separating the document text from the meta-code (the markup) is where the same formatting is use for multiple documents.

The use of a separate file for manipulating a system in this situation is trivial and obvious and has been done many times before. So there is, in my opinion, prior art. If this is the case then the patent is, by definition, invalid.