On Wed, Jan 04, 2006 at 12:45:40PM -0500, Gray, Eric wrote:
Ted,
If that happens, don't you think that we would be
obliged to object to their claims?
IMO, such claims would be easily defeated on the
same basis as most "look & feel" claims have been beaten
in the past. In fact, I am not aware of issues with any
sort of rights assertion relative to existing converters
for MS (or Adobe) document formats.
It is my understanding that Microsoft have been granted one or more
patents relating to their use of XML in their new, incompatible MS
Office document formats that will be used in their upcoming MS Office
release, such that writing programs which manipulate said propietary
XML schemas may require patent licenses.
Whether or not such patent claims are bogus or not, and whether or not
the US Patent Office has their heads in some very dark orifice is
somewhat out of scope of this mailing list, I think. I just wanted to
warn people that there may be some patent issues relating to working
with the new MS Office XML formats. And while the Microsoft has
offered some "free" patent licenses for their patents, said patent
rights are not sublicensable, so each end user who wants to use a
converter would have to go on bended knee to Microsoft and request
their own individual patent license.
This should be a very strong argument to not touch the new MS Word
document formats with a ten foot pole, IMHO.
- Ted
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