On Wed, Jan 04, 2006 at 12:45:40PM -0500, Gray, Eric wrote: > Ted, > > If that happens, don't you think that we would be > obliged to object to their claims? > > IMO, such claims would be easily defeated on the > same basis as most "look & feel" claims have been beaten > in the past. In fact, I am not aware of issues with any > sort of rights assertion relative to existing converters > for MS (or Adobe) document formats. It is my understanding that Microsoft have been granted one or more patents relating to their use of XML in their new, incompatible MS Office document formats that will be used in their upcoming MS Office release, such that writing programs which manipulate said propietary XML schemas may require patent licenses. Whether or not such patent claims are bogus or not, and whether or not the US Patent Office has their heads in some very dark orifice is somewhat out of scope of this mailing list, I think. I just wanted to warn people that there may be some patent issues relating to working with the new MS Office XML formats. And while the Microsoft has offered some "free" patent licenses for their patents, said patent rights are not sublicensable, so each end user who wants to use a converter would have to go on bended knee to Microsoft and request their own individual patent license. This should be a very strong argument to not touch the new MS Word document formats with a ten foot pole, IMHO. - Ted _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf