Posted on 08/12/2009 8:43:04 AM PDT by ShadowAce
A judge on Tuesday ordered Microsoft to stop selling Word, one of its premier products, in its current form due to patent infringement.
Judge Leonard Davis of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued a permanent injunction that "prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML", according to a statement released by attorneys for the plantiff, i4i.
Microsoft did not immediately reply to request for comment but said in a statement that it planned to appeal the verdict.
Toronto-based i4i sued Microsoft in March 2007 alleging that the software giant violated its 1998 patent (No 5,787,449) for a document system that eliminated the need for manually embedded formatting codes.
XML (Extensible Markup Language) is considered a "page description language", with one of its key qualities being that it is readable by people, not just machines. Unlike HTML, which has predefined tags, XML allows developers and users to define their own tags for data, such as price and product.
In May, a federal jury in Tyler, Texas, ruled that the custom XML tagging features of Word 2003 and Word 2007 infringed on i4i's patent and ordered Microsoft to pay $200m (£120m) in the case.
In Tuesday's ruling, Microsoft was also ordered to pay an additional $40m for willful infringement, as well as $37m in pre-judgement interest. The order requires Microsoft to comply with the injunction within 60 days and forbids Microsoft from testing, demonstrating or marketing Word products containing the contested XML feature.
If these people find a way to win this suit, we might as well turn off the light on the internet. As with most Software patents, the thing is stupid on the face of it. Patenting the intended use of an International Standard is over the top. XML is a sub-set of SGML, an attempt to get the job done when dragging all of the bells and whistles of SGML just got to be too much.
Software patents are the things that should be invalidated in this suit, not simply the patent on using XML in documents.
I didn't know that muawiyah was one of us Apple crazies you were aiming that flame at. His only statement was that Office 2007 un-unusable. I happen to know a lot of basically Microsoft fanboys who don't like Office 2007, and a whole lot of professionals who can't stand Office 2007.
I have used Office of various generations on both platforms. There are things I like about Office 2007, but the unintuitive interface just kills me. Office 2008 on my Macs is kind of a step in between - the interface makes a lot more sense, but a small number of features are not there.
I am trying desperately to move to Open Office/Neo Office on both platforms. They just don't handle fonts and other formatting well in a lot of cases. Maybe some day.
Remember Judge Penfield Jackson?
He decided to split up Microsoft too.
What happened to that splitting business when the case went to Appeal?
The entire compliment of all the Appeals court judges(all 7 of them, which is very very rare), not only decided to strike down Penfield Jackson's decision to split Microsoft into two, they also REMOVED Penfield Jackson entirely from the case, and strongly rebuked him for not following proper judicial procedure during the trial.
In cases of this kind, the first trial judge is but the first step in a very long journey.
“You don't know me, so you can't begin to apply any slurring moniker such as “anti-Microsoft foot soldier to me,” “
Oh yes I can.
All I had to do was read your virulent, nasty anti-Microsoft screech that is not backed by any facts, and I knew you were one of the usual anti-Microsoft foot soldiers we see on tech sites every single day of the year. Nothing new here.
“Wikipedia notes, “Mr. Ron Lake started work on GML in the fall of 1998”, “
Wikipedia can say whatever they want. That doesn't in the least change the fact that XML (1998), is based on SGML (1986), which itself is based on GML which goes as far back as the 1960’s. That's FACT.
There are plenty of sources to back that up. One of the men who actually invented GML, Charles F. Goldfarb, wrote this on the GML web site:
“Later in 1969, together with Ed Mosher and Ray Lorie, I invented Generalized Markup Language (GML) to solve the data representation problem. GML was not merely an alternative to procedural markup, but the logical representation that motivated all processing.”
GML stands for either Goldfarb, Mosher, Lorie(the first letters of the last names of Ed Mosher, Ray Lorie and Charles F. Goldfarb, the 3 guys that invented SGML), or it can also stand for Generalized Markup Language. I think the guy that actually invented GML should know when he invented it, don't you?
http://www.sgmlsource.com/history/roots.htm
http://www.roseindia.net/xml/xml-history.shtml
I have been using Google docs to write papers. I really like it. It has a very simple interface. It puts the page numbers in automatically for you when you print the document. It was a bit strange at first because it looks like one big long pager without breaks. But print preview shows you what you have. And you can put line breaks in manually if you need one specifically, like for the bibliography at the end of the paper.
I couldn't agree more.
Software patents have really become the biggest joke in technology right now. Any 2 bit hustler, who filed a patent for the most ridiculous “feature” 20 years ago, can wake up one drunken morning when he's broke, get himself some shyster lawyers, and simply try and blackmail tech companies into paying him vast amounts of cash, under the threat of creating havoc and mayhem and trying to lay waste to the entire technology industry.
We all still remember the ridiculous patent infringement suit brought by the professional patent trolling outfit called Eolas” over the Internet Explorer browser.
This business is getting ridiculous. If congress didn't have their heads up their butts, they'd have done something about this long ago.
Custom XML tags??? Custom as in "< name >", "< footer >", "< my_footer >" or any one of thousands or millions of imaginable custom tag names that extensible markup languages were created for?
You got my vote! I've rarely seen a chunk of code written from scratch, or a process that wasn't cluged from another similar existing process.
Gazillions of dollars are paid for licensing fees on software to corporations, where the original creator was bled and starved to death on a graveyard shift two generations ago, and nobody left in the corporation has a clue how to support it, but by Jove, they have the patent or copyright, and someone is gonna keep paying.
You use XML to create a custom markup language. The level of complexity of your new markup language will depend on what you are using it for. The greater the complexity of the structure you want describe, the greater the complexity of your document type. The number of tags can get very large, and the rules for combining those quite complex.
If your spend a lot of time and money to develop a markup language in XML and want to give it away, I will commend your generosity. But if you get a patent for it and want to charge people for using it, and you can find people to pay you for using, I will also commend you for being a good business man.
Since an XML markup language is not compiled, anyone can read it. So it's very easy to copy. The merit of this case will be based on the validity of i4i's patent.
The Patent system is insane and so is Microsoft. The patent should not have been granted as it would cover all XML and HTML editors. The problem is that HTML and SMGL editors existed before the patent was granted. However, the geniuses at Microsoft k...new about the patent and still decided to have Word and Excel 2007 use a specialized super set of XML. Instead of fighting the patent, they contested the claim that they were covered, despite the internal emails saying otherwise.
From your lips to God’s ear. You have it exactly.
Terabian style is quite complicated - does Google docs handle intricate footnotes and the odd page numbers that the style requires (Number location on each page depends upon not only if it is the first page of the work, but if there is a header or sub heading at the top of the page). IF Google docs can handle this easily, then I will certainly check it out.
Google docs is still in its early stages of development. You use it in a web browser and your documents are saved at Google. At this point I think it is mostly aimed for business users. But it does a great job for simple MLA style papers.
The user interface is still very simple, which is one of the reasons I like it so much. But at this stage I think it would be rather complicated to do what you need to do in Google docs. However, it could probably be done manually by coding the HTML. Here is a quick explanation. If you are not comfortable doing this, I would say don't try.
Still, I think it is worth checking out. This is the future of software applications. Yes, I know they were saying that 10 years ago, but I think this is beginning to happen now. Cloud computing has arrived. It will only get better.
This suit is not about HTML, JavaScript, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, C, C++, C# or even XML per say. So the outcome won't effect the web at all. This is about a document markup language that i4i created using the XML specifications. That new markup language is used for describing complicated text documents. It has nothing to do with the web. It does have a lot to do with Microsoft Word.
As with most Software patents, the thing is stupid on the face of it.
Software patents may indeed be stupid. But i4i does not have a patent on XML. It has a patent on a new markup language it created. If I write a program in the language C and get a copyright or patent on it, does that mean I have a copyright or patent on the C programming language? Of course not. It means that you have to pay me if you use my program. If you choose, you can write your own program in C and avoid paying me. But you will have to pay some programmers to write that new program. It might be cheaper to pay me to use my program.
Software patents are the things that should be invalidated in this suit, not simply the patent on using XML in documents.
Perhaps software patents should be invalidated, but this suit is not about using XML in documents. It is about a specific markup language that i4i created to describe documents.
I've been reading about the canonization of the Czar's family and a lot more and just wondered if you have any credible links or books you can recommend that wouldn't be too over my head. I'm not interested in becoming orthodox but I have sympathies towards orthodoxy in general. I've stumbled over various Russian Orthodox teachers and prophets via the web and just wondered which ones were reliable and which ones not.
IIRC years ago you used to post on usenet's orthodox group, but there's little but bickering there now.
Ok, I picked myself off of the floor. What do you think XML is? What do you think HTML is? The last two letters.. ML...is "Markup Language" so how can this fool patent the use of a Markup Language designed for allowing e"X"tensible tags to allow contextual independence of use for preparing any document rather than just web representations, i.e. PDF's, emails, and more..
If you understood XML, you would understand how lame the idea that someone could patent something that was promised in SGML years before that XML (A subset of SGML) has come to be used to implement when it is actually shipped by a developer as a feature that they tout.
Nevertheless, Microsoft is just as much to blame as anyone for this very situation.
The Patent Trolls and McKool Smith Show Why OOXML and Software Patents Should be Shunned
I agree. I prefer 2000 and it works on my Windows7! I have also used office 2003 and it's OK But Office 2007 has the strangest look. It looks as though it was an attempt to make it idiot proof....But it makes it unwieldy
Google docs? I am not storing personal docs on any external server. I don’t care what their privacy policy says, personal docs stay on personal devices under my control.
If you want things right for long documents, especially technical ones, you really need something like Adobe FrameMaker. It was designed for this stuff, while Word tries to be things it’s not.
HTML is a markup language. XML is not a markup language. XML is a tool that you use to create a markup language. In HTML the markup up tabs are defined for you. The rules for combining those tags are already defined for you.
With XML you create your own markup language by creating the tags and defining the rules that determine how those tags can be combined.
Do you understand the difference between HTML and XML?
The suit is not about a patent on XML. Nobody has a patent on XML. It is about a patent on a markup language created with XML, that is to say the new markup tags a company created and the rules that define how those newly created tags can be combined.
In HTML you don't invent your own tags. You don't define your own rules for combining those tags. It's all defined for you.
With XML you have the ability to create your own tags and rules for combining those tags.
By the way XHTML has been a huge flop. Why? Because XHTML is too restrictive. And nobody uses XML for AJAX any more. JavaScript objects and arrays have replaced XML. JavaScript is now the X in AJAX. Why has JavaScript replaced XML? Because it so much easier to describe a data structure in JavaScript than XML.
I agree with you. If you have some highly personal information you probably would not use Google docs. But what percentage of your documents are that sensitive? 1%? 2%?
All of your email is stored on a computer in the "cloud." How much of your email is personal? If you have a personal message you would not use email. You would want to deliver the message by hand.
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