XML has been around for what... 15 years?
SGML since the mid-80s.
According to Wikipedia, 11 years:
"The XML Working Group never met face-to-face; the design was accomplished using a combination of email and weekly teleconferences. The major design decisions were reached in twenty weeks of intense work between July and November 1996, when the first Working Draft of an XML specification was published.[20] Further design work continued through 1997, and XML 1.0 became a W3C Recommendation on February 10, 1998."Interestingly, the patent in this claim was filed on July 28, 1998... five and half months after the XML 1.0 recommendation was released.