 |
|
CONTENT SYNDICATION 
|
|
CONTENT SYNDICATION
|
|
BLOGROLL OPML:
|
|
|
|
Search in IPJUR.COM
|
BLOG@IP::JURPatent Attorney Axel H Horns' Blog on Intellectual Property Law.
Saturday, January 24, 2004Microsoft Patenting Office XML Formats?There seems to be something like an uproar within the FOSS scene concerning attempts by Microsoft to obtain a patent appearently in conjunction with some Office XML Formats. There is, for example, a pending European patent application03009719.0 published on January 02, 2004 as EP publication EP 1 376 387 A2.
Claim 1 as published in the application reads: "A computer-readable medium having computer-executable components, comprising: a first component for reading a word-processor document stored as a single XML file; a second component that utilizes an XSD for interpreting the word-processor document, and a third component for performing an action on the word-processor document. " Another independent claim 11 reads: "A method for handling a word-processing document, comprising: parsing the document, wherein the document is contained within a single XML file and includes all of the instructions necessary to display the document according to how a word-processor would display the document; and interpreting the document according to an XSD. " There are two more independent claims with related respective subject-matters in the application. It should be clear that there is a significant difference between a patent claim written in a patent application and a granted and enforceable claim. It is always a good practice to draft claims very broad when authoring a patent application but everybody should expect such claims to be further limited during the patent examination procedure. Without having investigated this claim in depth I am fairly sceptical that it will be granted in this form in view of tons of XML related prior art stuff available to be public before the priority date of that application which was June 28, 2002. Instead of raging against patents on computer-implemented inventions (which are to stay here, that is for sure) those who are afraid of overbroad claims in the field of XML word processing software should be prepared to collect any available prior art in the field in order to be sure that the patent eventually granted can be limited to the novel and non-obvious core of the subject-matter as disclosed in the application. Furthermore, I am really curious on how the European Patent Office (EPO) might eventually assess the technical contribution of the invention which might - in view of the present political row on patents on computer-implemented inventions - be expected to be more savagely scrutinised during patent examination than ever before.
| ||||||||||||||||
