Cart
[Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries]
It would need to be marked up though to be patentable: <CogentListArgument temperature="nonFlaming"> Text of Argument </CogentListArgument> -----Original Message----- From: John Cowan [mailto:cowan@m...] Sent: Saturday, 24 January 2004 5:30 PM To: Bob Wyman Cc: xml-dev@l... Subject: Re: Microsoft files for XML patents, says C|Net Bob Wyman scripsit: > There has been a rash of patents applied for and granted > recently whose only differentiation from the prior art is that the > call for encoding data using HTML, XHTML or XML. In many cases, the > "process" being patented is exactly like others that have been long in > use, the only difference is the encoding format. The Microsoft > patent[2] that Tim Bray pointed to in his note falls largely in this > class. If you substitute "ASN.1" for the occurrences of XML and/or XSD > in this patent, you'll see that prior art extends back to 1982 or so > -- especially since, "ASN.1 is an XML schema language." [1] Thus, > using ASN.1, rather than XSD, I could produce a system which is > effectively identical to that in the Microsoft patent application by > simply translating the XSD into ASN.1. Would this mean that I could > get a patent on such a system? Or, if I translated the schema to > RelaxNG or Schematron that I could get additional patents? Based on > current patent office practice, it seems like the answer is "Yes." > However, this is clearly wrong. There's no reason you couldn't get a patent on this very argument: it's sufficiently "novel and useful" to pass muster, apparently. -- "By Elbereth and Luthien the Fair, you shall jcowan@r... have neither the Ring nor me!" --Frodo http://www.ccil.org/~cowan ----------------------------------------------------------------- The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org <http://www.xml.org>, an initiative of OASIS <http://www.oasis-open.org> The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list use the subscription manager: <http://lists.xml.org/ob/adm.pl>
|
