Microsoft to appeal Word patent ruling

I don't know the typical experience working at Microsoft, but where I was they were the laziest, least professional, incompetent engineers I'd ever worked with. The one weekly meeting was to discuss movies we'd seen and where to go to lunch. The idea that a boss who passed her day Internet shopping would ever come up with an innovative technical idea is laughable.

But, the new Microsoft products have to come from somewhere. So they buy them from other companies -- as they have from the very start. And apparently, they steal them.

I wonder what the actual details of this patent are. I hope that people don't jump to conclusions about this based on their preconceptions about microsoft.

But seriously, encoding documents in XML, like the new version of word does, is a fundamental concept of computer science, is not very innovative, and would be classed as "industry knowledge" in patent law. Patents shouldn't be issued for that in the first place.

And who cares if some stolen code from Digital Research ends up in Microsoft DOS (OK, it was a long time ago, but they have been stealing for a long time!)

And who cares if some stolen code from Digital Research ends up in Microsoft DOS

The code was created by looking at a DR manual. Supposedly the guy couldn't afford CPM, it was very expensive, and decided to create his own by writing an OS that matched the specs of CPM. If there had been real DR code I strongly suspect that MS would have been sued. IBM as well.

Ethelred

i4i's patent (5,787,449) is entitled "Method and system for manipulating the architecture and the content of a document separately from each other"

Microsoft Word infringes on this patent using its "Custom XML" feature that allows you to embed a file of any type within the XML of an Office document. However, it has nothing to do with XML -- typical shoddy reporting. The infringement has to do with how Office can relate and store the "other" document within its own XML format, even though that "other" document does not have to be text or XML (it can be binary.)

Microsoft no longer does patent research on its new technologies. Its people simply innovate and if they like it, they use it. If it happens to infringe then they just buy the company they infringed upon. It's actually a lot cheaper because willful and knowledgeable infringement loses a lot more money in court than willful ignorant infringement.