Patent fun: Microsoft Word sales banned in the US [LWN.net]

Patent fun: Microsoft Word sales banned in the US

Posted Aug 12, 2009 14:08 UTC (Wed) by sbakker (subscriber, #58443)
Parent article: Patent fun: Microsoft Word sales banned in the US

Wow. The army of blind monkeys that is the USPTO has done it again (or, rather, did it eleven years ago).

The basic idea is very simple and comes down to, "one piece of data addressing pieces somewhere else and some way to combine the whole."

Abstract from that a little, and any piece of software that can handle references, inclusion and/or macros is likely to infringe on this (probably including gcc and even the combination of cat+ext3).

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Patent fun: Microsoft Word sales banned in the US

Posted Aug 12, 2009 15:02 UTC (Wed) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (1 responses)

The patent application is from 1994. Even ext2 would have been too late to invalidate it.

Patent fun: Microsoft Word sales banned in the US

Posted Aug 12, 2009 17:19 UTC (Wed) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]

ext2 is just a heavily simplified version of UFS - and UFS was created in 1984.

Patent fun: Microsoft Word sales banned in the US

Posted Aug 12, 2009 15:12 UTC (Wed) by etrusco (guest, #4227) [Link] (3 responses)

Is it also part of the trial to decide whether the patent application is valid?

Patent fun: Microsoft Word sales banned in the US

Posted Aug 12, 2009 18:16 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (2 responses)

I'm no expert on the USA's system, but I'd guess, if the trial can examine the patent's validity, it can only do so *if* the defendant argued that the patent was invalid.

MS is probably uneasy about making those sort of arguments since it could come back to haunt them. MS has their own XML patents

Patent fun: Microsoft Word sales banned in the US

Posted Aug 12, 2009 18:53 UTC (Wed) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] (1 responses)

Perhaps, but this injunction might be enough of a blow to wake them up and make them realize that the patent system is hurting everyone.

Maybe.

Patent fun: Microsoft Word sales banned in the US

Posted Aug 12, 2009 19:47 UTC (Wed) by bersl2 (guest, #34928) [Link]

Ah, wishful thinking...

Patent fun: Microsoft Word sales banned in the US

Posted Aug 13, 2009 0:21 UTC (Thu) by PaulWay (guest, #45600) [Link]

> The basic idea is very simple and comes down to, "one piece of data
> addressing pieces somewhere else and some way to combine the whole."

NEVER do this. Patent lawyers do NOT just go around liberally applying meaning to whatever in the patent takes their fancy; they have a very specific and strict interpretation of it. If they say "Document" in the patent it doesn't mean "anything that might even vaguely resemble a document", it means some specific interpretation which is either in the patent or in the dialogue between the patent office and the patentor. You have to read all of that to make sure you understand exactly what the patent covers (unfortunately).

Tridge showed this with the FAT patent - he had to read the entire patent and the dialogue (I forget the exact term for this) in order to understand exactly what was patented, which was a *very* small subset of what might have been inferred from the language of just the patent itself. This dialogue also showed that the patent had been knocked back several times because of specific conflicts with other patents (most which had expired but still prevented the idea being repatented).

Tridge's FAQ for the second FAT kernel patch also pointed out that speculating wildly in a public forum (or anywhere a message can be stored later) about the nature of a patent or what it applies to can be used in evidence against us. Even if you turn out to be hopelessly wrong the lawyers can just argue that your original opinion holds weight (I'm paraphrasing - look Tridge's FAQ up).

I don't have much respect for patents, and the USPTO has shown itself to allow lots of really spurious things, but I would be very careful in criticising them out of hand.

Have fun,

Paul