Hi Peter,
In regards to your letter in opposition to the MS patent I notice you have not included an argument specifying prior art as a reason for opposition. I believe that is one of the strongest reasons for opposing this patent. I applaud your approach of stating that it is not an invention or product but believe that to not specify prior art as a reason for opposition removes one of the strongest reasons to oppose this patent.
MS has no right to claim any ownership of xml or similar. They also leave the way open for claiming other forms of SGML HTML and other mark-up languages are actually a breach of this patent, after all the only difference between well formed html and xhtml is one letter in a tag in many cases. Many HTML pages are themselves word processed like pages with text, layout, pictures, encoding ... all in a single document using an xml or xml like language which can be manipulated using an application which understands xml. They have failed to define what a word processing document is leaving a huge door of uncertainty open.
Other than that, well done.
<humour attempt=weak>
It might even be worth claiming that MS breaks GPL by close sourcing code which rests on GPL or open source software ....
</humour>
Shane
Andrew Turner wrote:
From NZOSS on the Microsoft XML Patent as seen on this list mid March.
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [NZOSS-OpenChat] Patent Opposition Draft Proposal Date: Sat, 7 May 2005 10:10:30 +1200 From: Peter Harrison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: NZOSS OpenChat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I had a good read of the MS XML patent, and I think we have grounds to oppose. In the following link I have prepared a draft statement of case. Please download and comment.
http://nzoss.org.nz/resources/MS_Patent_Opposition.pdf
Note this has *not* been approved yet, and will probably not be the final copy submitted. Also, I am not a lawyer, and although I did a bit of reading abou how to prepare an opposition it is not done by a pro.
I'll be getting a professional to look over it before submission anyway.
Regards,
Peter
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