[CLUE-Talk] ms patenting xml ??

[Jed S. Baer]

On Mon, 26 Jan 2004 19:12:41 -0800 (PST)
bill ehlert <ehlert_b at yahoo.com> wrote:

> **  i really don't understand this.
> 
>     but i have the feeling it's a  Bad Thing
>     for open-source software

What they're planning on patenting is the MS Office document formats,
which happen to be expressed in XML. They have no standing to patent XML
itself.

Whether it's a problem for other programs (not just FOSS) which read/write
files in those formats? I'd guess a "clean-room" defense would be what
would happen. Whether, for example, OpenOffice could afford the
litigation, it's hard to say. One can imagine Sun stepping up to the plate
for them. But other projects, I dunno.

jed
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... it is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday
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