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MS Word: Live by the patent, die by the patent? (rant)

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Carol Haynes:
Interesting idea. Although how i4i could have done that before Microsoft came up with MS-OOXML is anybody's guess.  ;)-40hz (August 20, 2009, 05:43 AM)
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That's simple - i4i came up with the idea and sensibly patented it, MS used it and then claimed it was their idea and patented it and as usual claim that i4i had a time machine and only placed the patent after MS came up with the idea.

zridling:
Ah, more details emerge from i4i on how the patent doesn't involve the MS-OOXML format itself, but the Custom XML element used in Word 2003/07:

* "The suit is not about file formats, and the verdict has no implications for Open XML,” Kutz added. “It is about the way Microsoft Word handles certain kinds of code. In addition, the particular Custom XML functionality at issue is not used by most customers."

* "i4i said it has looked at OpenOffice and found it doesn’t infringe on its patents."

* Why the i4i and Microsoft patents do not apply to ODF

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Finally, Amy Wohl explains the whole mess better than anyone I've read so far:
..............
It's important to know what a custom tag is, so you'll understand that although it's critical to some users (such as large pharmaceutical companies), it's largely unused by the average Word user.  XML (which is the basis not just for Word but for other modern word processors such as OpenOffice, as well) allows text to be tagged.  Standard XML tags are built into Word for objects like names, item numbers and so forth; these standard XML tags are not at issue in the patent disspute.  However i4i holds a patent on software that allows a company to create custom tags so that it may, for example, collect all the objects that contain a particular ingredient or were approved by a particular manager.  Pharmaceutical companies use it to get the rght information onto medicine labels.

According to my conversation with i4i's attorney, Doug Cawley of McCool Smith, Microsoft at first referred customers to i4i for this custom tag function, but then decided to build the function into Word; he explained that documents made public at the trial indicate Microsoft chose to proceed knowing that they might make i4i obsolete by including custom tags in Word.
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40hz:
Interesting idea. Although how i4i could have done that before Microsoft came up with MS-OOXML is anybody's guess.  ;)-40hz (August 20, 2009, 05:43 AM)
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That's simple - i4i came up with the idea and sensibly patented it, MS used it and then claimed it was their idea and patented it and as usual claim that i4i had a time machine and only placed the patent after MS came up with the idea.
-Carol Haynes (August 20, 2009, 06:09 AM)
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 >:D >:D >:D >:D >:D >:D >:D

Ah, thank you Carol. I knew there would be a logical explanation for it.

f0dder:
So... any software that allows users to create their own XML tags could be targeted by this? How lame.

Carol Haynes:
I don't think it is as simplistic as that - the whole point of XML is that tags are user definable. It is something to do with the way MS embed stuff within the XML schema.

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