That should cover the whole MS Office suite, and if they win against MS, that is OpenOffice, Lotus Symphons et al. also gone, plus about half of all modern intra-business communications processes...

It will probably be like Eolas when they sued MS for a breach of patent in IE. Except every browser did it.

It's about getting a huge wad of cash and nothing more.

As I understand it the patent applies only to embedding custom XML, what MS refers to as Custom XML within its standard OOMXL, within the standard format. Since Open Office decided doing something like that broke the idea of a standard (it made the standard a moving target and therefore not a real standard) and was to be deprecated as good practise anyway (I'm not a programmer to explain that) ODF does not permit it and therefore is believed to be immune to this patent.

(Groklaw, and other places, have articles/blogs on this to explain it better. They also point out the patent is another very broken software patent since there is masses of relevant prior art.)

I'd feel more sympathy for MS if they hadn't recently filed for an XML patent in the US that to my, admittedly non expert, eye that is equally dubious.

Richard.

I'm trying to get my head around this. Custom XML patent... XML is, by definition, customised for each use, so in general terms any application which uses a schema to generate or read XML would be affected.

In an interview with the company on BOL, it sounds like they never thought that there were XML based word processors, other than Word...

Having skimmed through the Custom XML link, it looks like this is exactly what XML was designed for.

My understanding is, and bear with me because I know very little of XML beyond principles and its origins in SGML, that the patent isn't about XML as such but a particular usage of it within a file format. Which is why MS got caught out and Open Office apparently is immune to this threat as it does not include an equivalent to 'Custom XML'. (Note that the judgment is specific to 'Custom XML', not OOXML's being XML based and OOXML as a whole. It also seems to be specific to Word as in fact the OOXML formats for Powerpoint and Excel are different and don't included 'Custom XML' - unlike ODF OOXML is really three different file formats within the same wrapper with very little in common from what I've read. I don't use it and don't have the expertise to comment further.)

Core of the judgement:

1. 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;

2. using any Infringing and Future Word Products to open an XML file containing custom XML;

3. instructing or encouraging anyone to use any Infringing and Future Word Products to open an XML file containing custom XML;

4. providing support or assistance to anyone that describes how to use any infringing and Future Word Products to open an XML file containing custom XML; and

5. testing, demonstrating, or marketing the ability of the Infringing and Future Word Products to open an XML file containing custom XML.

I personally cannot see anything original in this patent as I've seen it described but I'm not a programmer so I could be missing something; except what I'm reading elsewhere from people who are experts suggest that is also their view. It seems there is prior art around but this is the first time the patent has been tested (a big criticism of the USPTO is that it's testing is minimal to nonexistent so a lot of bad patents get through and don't get tested until someone with a deep enough wallet decides to fight when the patent is asserted against them, a lot of businesses can't afford the costs to roll over which doesn't help when it is contested as it aids the presumption it is valid upping the task for someone trying to get it invalidated).

Richard.

Yeah I saw it was how they used it in a particular way with a custom version...just have to disable it in a patch and it should be good for a while