Loud ramblings of a Software Artisan

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Wednesday 23 March 2005 09:08, by datadevil :: #

Isn't is like this; they get a patent as no prior art was known, you can submit the prior art, and after investigation, the patent will be recalled?

Wednesday 23 March 2005 09:35, by eyal :: site :: #

actually, in general patents do not mean anything until contested in a court, they do by themselves not have any judicial value.

if microsoft was to sue somebody for violating this particular patent (given that the story is actually true) the accused would point to abiword as prior art, and the judge could decide that the patent does not hold because of that.

Also note, that there are judicial areas in which patents hold; if the patent is granted as a national australian patent, it has no value at all in a european court.

so in short: a patent office is just a prefilter before a court.

Wednesday 23 March 2005 15:20, by J.B. Nicholson-Owens :: #

Eric Kriss, Secretary for the Executive Office of the Administration of Finance for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, also said in late January that "[...] it is our expectation that the next iteration of the Open Format standard will include some Microsoft proprietary formats. These formats, like DOC files, will be deemed to be Open Formats because they will no longer have restrictions on their use.". These are the words of an organization that has accepted a watered-down standard instead of a strong one which pays attention to user's software freedoms. Microsoft has said that they will change the terms of use for "end users who merely open and read government documents".

It's worth noting that "merely open[ing] and read[ing] government documents" doesn't necessarily include doing things users want to do with government documents in electronic form including sharing copies of documents, printing documents, or excerpting them. All of these can be precluded for most Microsoft Office users (the majority of whom are novices doing virtually anything on a computer) by a well-implemented DRM system. This stands to adversely affect novices the most.

Betanews covered this in late January (www.betanews.com/article/...) and the quote from Kriss remains on Mass. official "Open Formats" description to this day (their comment page is www.mass.gov/eoaf/open_fo...).

I suspect that Mass. did this in exchange for some reduced-price proprietary software licenses for various Microsoft programs. It sure doesn't serve the taxpayers of Mass. to watch their government documents become locked up through proprietary software and file formats.

Wednesday 23 March 2005 16:13, by Michael :: #

In the US at least, it is notoriously difficult to invalidate a patent once it's been granted, and defending against a patent infringement suit is a lot more complicated (and expensive) than just pointing to what someone claims to be prior art. The courts presume that the patent is valid (otherwise the PTO wouldn't have granted it, right?) and a defendant has the burden of proving the patent (or some of its claims) should be declared invalid.

Prior art, in itself, is not enough to invalidate a patent. The prior art has to have a substantial overlap with the claims of the patent to establish that what the patent covers is not original or non-obvious. I haven't read it, but I wouldn't be surprised if the MS patent actually references the AbiWord file format as prior art - in which case its claims ought to cover how it handles the format differently.

If the AbiWord folks are concerned, then they should have someone competent read (and make sure they understand) the MS patent claims, and determine whether what the patent covers overlaps AbiWord's format and functionality. If there is an overlap, and it can be shown that the overlapping functionality was in AbiWord prior to MS's claims, then they should talk to someone about filing an official challenge based on their prior art.

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