It's pretty black and white, really. Their implementation was a clear copy of somebody else's patented implementation, so it's out. Just pay the license and move on.
It's pretty black and white, really. Their implementation was a clear copy of somebody else's patented implementation, so it's out. Just pay the license and move on.
The ruling is crap. Patenting "custom XML" is like patenting drinking glasses. Once again, a court has handed down a ruling on something it doesn't understand--if it did, it would invalidate the patent.
As has been stated many times before, the patent system is broken. This is just another example of how broken it is. That i4i was granted a patent for custom XML is pretty ridiculous.
They were granted a patent for a specific implementation of an XML rendering algorithm. It's about as inoffensive as you can get with software patents. They did exactly what it was meant to do - protect specific implementations. It's not like they patented "decoding XML" - they patented their method.
There are plenty of reasons to get prickly about the patent system, but this isn't one of them.
Whatever, i4i just needed some money from Microsoft (and willing to be bought by); the funny thing is that they target ms office with stuff they do. Their corporate presentation is PowerPoint for the love of peter. So now instead of having office doing "these little used" features, you have to go and pay i4i for them when they have nothing to do with the way things are done within office. Just like that patent about using 3D in games, yes, not shaders or algorithms, just using 3D. I'm filing a patent for using images in WebPages then... that is bull...
Wow... the guests are feeling pretty special today. Perhaps you people should actually do a bit of research before you spout off at the mouth. Microsoft stole a specific implementation for their product. That implementation was patented. They deserved what they got. Sure, there are plenty of abuses of software patents (see: Apple copyrighting the whole concept of a multitouch interface) but this is not one of them. Microsoft could have written their own code to generate XML and they would have been just fine, instead they chose to rip off a pre-existing and patented implementation and they got nabbed for it.
Thrax
🐌Austin, TX Icrontian
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That's what I think. A court has decided.
There are plenty of reasons to get prickly about the patent system, but this isn't one of them.