RSSIs Microsoft Attempting to Patent RSS?
By Ed Oswald | Published December 22, 2006, 12:46 PM
According to patent applications recently made public, it now appears that shortly before Microsoft publicly announced integrated RSS support within Internet Explorer and Windows Vista, it filed for two patents with the US Patent and Trademark Office surrounding Web-based feed readers.
The first patent application covers technologies that will find and consume feeds into a web browser. It will also provide ways to allow a user to organize and view web feeds through an API, as well as methods to discover new feeds.
Another patent application covers a "content syndication platform," which appears from the application to be the actual software backend for the methods described in the first patent application.
Microsoft first discussed the addition of RSS into Internet Explorer and Windows at Gnomedex in late June 2005. At the time, it appeared that the company was to deliver any modifications that it makes to the RSS standard to Creative Commons licensed under the Share Alike attribution agreement, however it now appears it has made moves to patent it.
The dates on the patent applications are June 21, 2005. A standard 18-month non-disclosure period exists for patent applications under current patent law.
One of the patent application authors, Jane Kim, blogged on the changes in August of last year on the Internet Explorer team blog. At that time, Microsoft chose to not disclose its intentions to patent the technologies discussed.
The disclosure of the patents has received near immediate criticism from those with strong interests in the RSS format. Dave Winer, who regards himself as one of the inventors of the format, is one of the most vocal.
"Presumably they're eventually going to charge us to use it," he said in a post to his Scripting News web log on Thursday. "This should be denounced by everyone who has contributed anything to the success of RSS."
Some within Microsoft are telling people like Winer to relax. Don Dodge, director of business development for Microsoft's Emerging Business Team, said in a Friday post to his personal web log that he believed Microsoft has no intention of enforcing the patent or collecting royalties.
"Microsoft is protecting itself against patent trolls," he wrote. "Microsoft is not pretending that they invented RSS...just protecting itself against potential patent infringement lawsuits from 'shell companies' and 'patent trolls' who do nothing but sue big companies."
"Patents become poker chips in a high stakes game of legal lunacy" to defend against infringement lawsuits, he added.
Microsoft is not officially commenting on the patent itself, although it invited others with issues with the application to file claims of prior art.
Does anybody really care about this when there are more important questions like where are my F***ing car keys?
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|What a load of bull...
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|to save your anonimyty in the internet just use web proxies
working ones you can find anytime at:
http://getproxy.emigrantas.com
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|I'm tellin' ya, Microsoft just IS the great software Satan...
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|Don't use religious words in the corporate arena. Nobody cares about that... except the Stock Market.
I do admit that what MS is doing is "wrong," but we can always by-pass them. I wouldn't take Excedrin for this because it's not worth my brain power. Leave them alone in their own La La Land, just like Zune.
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|Zune...
lol
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|Is Satan the same god as Hades?
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|The flaw in the idea is that somehow such people believe that the users, scientists, developers, or simple ordinary people by default believe what MS, or any other company says or promises. Seeing how the US patent system works, probably even this patent application will go through. They say that if this happens, they have no intention of suing anyone. Let's suppose it will happen that way. Still, as always, two things can happen:
- people will stop using the technology, because if it's in the hands of a big corp, there's no guarantee that it will always remain unenforced and free to use, people change, corps change, goals change, ideology changes, and quickly,
- people will develop new ideas to replace the patented technology, only to see MS try to patent the new idea again after a while.
The only way to stop such "protective" patent applications is to show prior art by the dozen. Still, it seems sometimes even this can't help, peculiarly.
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|Don Dodge, director of business development for Microsoft's Emerging Business Team said "Microsoft is protecting itself against patent trolls," and said "Patents become poker chips in a high stakes game of legal lunacy". Don Dodge demonstrates the mentality of Microsoft.
Invention FUELS our economy. It always has! Our founding fathers recognized that it was so important that they spelled out inventors' rights as a PROPERTY right.
Microsoft and their patent pirating allies know that they will not produce the important inventions. And they have learned the hard way that inventors will hold them accountable for theft.
It is long past time that people recognize that the Coalition for Patent Fairness is really the Coalition for Patent Piracy --- parasites who should be held in check for the good of society.
Ronald J. Riley,
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Direct (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 9 pm EST
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|Not to defend MS but in this day and age, if I used any tech. that I didn't develop myself, I'd do something about it - not to make sure people have to pay me royalties, to make sure there's noone out there ready to sue me for royalties. Now is MS being honest in this? Who knows? Only time will tell - for all we know they could want royalties etc. but I don't think so. If they want a technology, they buy the company or person who created it, this is more their way than anything super underhanded like this.
The Blackberry case is a prime example of needing protection. There are a bunch of teeny tiny companies out there who are in the business of sueing other companies that touch on technology that they've managed to patent - which wasn't even developed by them! Just like lawyers who scour for legal loopholes these companies scour for techno. freebies, patent them and like slick, slimy, scavengers lay in wait for a company to innovate on the technology - they don't even pounce right away, they do it when it's a tough deal for the company to remove said infringing product.
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|Agreed. There are so many frivolous lawsuits these days it's worth spending the extra money to stop yourself being sued millions in the long run.
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|Mmmm. BetaNews story blown out of proportion number 6092.
1. They aren't trying to patent RSS
2. If they are, they won't get it.
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|Agreed. It seems to be happening more and more nowadays.
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|Uh-oh, another case of "I disagree so it must be biased" disease. You disagree with the story? Great, thanks for sharing you opinion. However, that doesn't mean the story is blown out of proportion, biased, or anything else like that.
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|You're one of those people who just accepts any information presented to you in print/on T.V., aren't you.
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|I do not dismiss nor accept any source purely based on my personal bias. Do you just believe everything Microsoft says?
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|All Sony haters rejoyce, your favorite company is sucking up everything and making it theirs...
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|EU is probably already writing their new fine against Microsoft for this :)
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|Mmmmmmm. Money for Europe.
This time it would be fair too!
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|I filed for a patent on sleeping, and I swear to Zeus I will sue every last one of you if you don't pay me royalties on every catnap. In fact, I invented dozing, if by invention you mean "rode a lawyer to the courthouse steps."
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|I wonder if they used Google's new Patent search for that...
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|I'll patent wearing clothes, and let gates be naked.
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|We are used to seeing this with Microsoft and other big companies. However, maybe I don't really understand the story but why didn't anybody else patent this before? If Dave Winer is the the one who has invented this he probably should have protect himself, especally seeing the fast adoption over the last couple of years.
-----
http://www.greenday-central.com
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|It's no good. I can't take your comments seriously if you link to a Green Day fansite.
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|LOL!
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|I have one word that can invalidate their patent: Klipfolio! They have been applying this concept long before Microsoft has.
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|Microsoft was in a better place to muscle their versions of open standards in the past, but this time it could back fire on them. Hopefully!
Typical case of embrace, adapt and force out. Out of order again.
When will these demented egos grow up? When we've finally all left for open software?
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|"Microsoft is protecting itself against patent trolls,"
That's great, but as we have seen the Blackberry case, once a patent is granted a great deal of harm can be caused to others, even if the patent should have been invalid. I also feel that patenting something you didn't create is morally wrong.
I understand that you are supposed to cite possible prior art in a patent application. I wonder if MS did that.
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|Both Microsoft and RIM (Blackberry)are well known for their piracy of other's inventions and for their unethical conduct with both inventors and the courts where both companies were caught trying to foist manufactured evidence on the courts.
Both are members of the Coalition for Patent Fairness, a group of patent pirating companies which spends a great deal of money promoting stories about patent trolls. What they are not telling people is that they transformed fun loving inventors into mythical ugly trolls by pillaging the inventors property and then the inventors with the legal system.
Patent pirates are parasites who destroy jobs and tax base creation.
Inventors cannot afford to invent if they are fleeced of the value the invention produces. When companies like RIM and Microsoft (clearly cut from the same ethical cloth) get away with stealing inventions and shipping the value of those invention to some low wage country everyone loses.
I am surprised that people buy their propaganda and by so doing promote the interests of such bad players.
Ronald J. Riley,
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Direct (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 9 pm EST.
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|Hmmm, OmniViewer, an application created by DigiPortal Software was doing this kind of thing in 1999 - it would load an arbitrary list of pages from all over the web(or query a SQL database or Outlook Mail, NNTP, etc) and generate an XML file of JUST the desired portions of those pages. That XML file could then be read by various "viewers" (tickers, browsers, WML phones, voice output). The built-in programming language that easily generated the XML page was also able to generate output in RSS format.
I have no doubt that other companies have produced similar things in the past.
So what exactly has Microsoft done that's protectable?
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|Hmmm, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and other megacorps complain about the patent mess they helped to create, but they won't go near the GPL. Funny. Next week, I hear Microsoft is going to file a patent on the Linux kernel, claiming Steve Ballmer thought of it first (not factually, just according to his understanding of the kernel).
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|And he will probably lose just like SCO did.
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|He is SCO (the money behind it, to be precise), which is why many people won't trust what might otherwise be a perfectly plausible explanation for the RSS thing.
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|At least we know Novell's creds are crap and can never recover from this. By co-opting integrity for the promise of cash through the court system, Novell joins the ranks of SCO, RIAA, MPAA, et al. What's hilarious is to go back and reread all those Microsoft-funded anti-Linux "studies" over the past decade. Now they're reduced to effectively paying people to switch to Windows.
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