Company Claims Patent Over XML 421
Aviran Mordo writes "News.com reports that a small software developer plans to seek royalties from companies that use XML, the latest example of patent claims embroiling the tech industry. Charlotte, N.C-based Scientigo owns two patents (No. 5,842,213 and No. 6,393,426) covering the transfer of 'data in neutral forms.' These patents, one of which was applied for in 1997, are infringed upon by the data-formatting standard XML, Scientigo executives assert."
One word - EDIFACT (Score:5, Informative)
Significantly older than 1997, and achieved the same goals as XML, though much less elegantly.
Antother word perwill... (Score:3, Informative)
Perwill [google.co.uk] is a horrible piece of software written by Polaris that maps from one text based format to another, it's mainly used for EDI but can be used for anything (you could probably setup an XML/SGML template if you could bare using the software for that long).
Re:Antother word perwill... (Score:5, Informative)
How about structurally-tagged content dating back as far as the late 1960s?
A Brief History of the Development of SGML [sgmlsource.com]
For that matter, XML is just a specific, more restrictive dialect of SGML. The SGML draft standard was first published in 1985, twelve years prior to this patent. Since XML is a proper subset of prior art that existed prior to the filing of this patent, XML in effect existed prior to the filing of this patent.
If this ever goes to court, the company should expect their lawyers to be prosecuted for barratry.
Barratry (Score:5, Informative)
barratry (br'-tr)
n., pl. -tries.
1. The offense of persistently instigating lawsuits, typically groundless ones.
2. An unlawful breach of duty on the part of a ship's master or crew resulting in injury to the ship's owner.
3. Sale or purchase of positions in church or state.
[Middle English barratrie, the sale of church offices, from Old French baraterie, deception, malversation, from barater, to cheat. See barrator.]
Re:Antother word perwill... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of Grains of Salt and Barratry (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Antother word perwill... (Score:5, Informative)
Not only does SGML predate these patents by a long, long time, XML itself was announced at SGML'96. I took a copy of the draft standard home from that meeting. So XML also predates the earliest patent application by on the order of a year.
Re:Antother word perwill... (Score:3, Interesting)
Subsets of an existing idea are individually patentable. A 3x3x3m block of steel, after all, is a superset of thousands of different useful machines- just eliminate the excess molecule(s), and there it is! "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."
The XML specification is a subset of
Re:Antother word perwill... (Score:3, Insightful)
A machine being a subset of a chunk of steel is somewhat backwards. You cannot just take my list of tools or ideas, leave a few out and then claim them as your own. You have to create a new function or improvment for them.
Now maybe the fact we are discussing all this prior art (that might not apply) doesn't mean thier patten isn't valid but that it shows it might be overly broad and reaches into too many areas?
Step 1, look for an existing id
Re:One word - EDIFACT (Score:5, Informative)
That seems to seal it - he's disclaiming heirarchical data structures isn't he? Wouldn't it be fair to say that if anything, XML is a hierarchical data structure?
<I>
<always>
<thought>
<so></so>
</thought>
</always>
</I>
Re:One word - EDIFACT (Score:4, Interesting)
Heck, that sounds like a CSV formatted file...
I hope he doesn't think he invented THAT...!
Re:One word - EDIFACT (Score:3, Informative)
i.e., a string of X repeated Y times is represented as XY, e.g.
11144333529999998777222222222
is represented as
134233512196817329
Nifty, and useful for compressing something with a lot of serial redundancy (like PPM files, anything will help those!), but patent worthy?
The US gov't thought so.
But does it matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
So in the 90's it was:
1) Do something cool
2)
3) Profit
In the 00's it's
1) Do something somebody else did before
2) Sue everybody who already did it
3) Profit
Re:One word - EDIFACT (Score:3, Informative)
Re:One word - EDIFACT (Score:3, Informative)
1. If there are commas in a field, it must be surrounded by double quotes.
2. If there are double quotes in a double quoted field, they must be escaped with a second double quote.
Like so
"95,123",100,"Test ""data"" in here",I was bored
The number of data providers in this world who have no clue how to produce a proper CSV is staggering.
How about gaseous molecules in neutral form (Score:3, Insightful)
Nitrogen - 78%
Oxygen - 21%
Argon - 1%
Carbon Dioxide -
Neon -
Methane -
Helium -
Krypton -
Hydrogen -
Xenon -
Wanna guess what I'm gonna do if I can get a patent on that?
<start evil laughter>
All of you will be my slaves and I will rule the world!!!
<end evil laughter>
Queen B
Re:How about gaseous molecules in neutral form (Score:3, Funny)
"Air 1.2 - Now with 0.032859% More Wow Factor"
Re:How about gaseous molecules in neutral form (Score:3, Funny)
>>> Methane -
I'll patent air with Methane > 5%
Anyone who produces this will owe me an ass-load of money.
Re:How about gaseous molecules in neutral form (Score:3, Funny)
Re:One word - EDIFACT (Score:3, Funny)
Patenting Patents (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Patenting Patents (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Patenting Patents (Score:5, Funny)
As an online discussion about patents grows longer, the probability someone saying "I'll just patent the patent process" approaches 1.
Re:Patenting Patents (Score:5, Funny)
No wonder you guys are so crazy about patents (Score:5, Funny)
SGML? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:SGML? (Score:3, Informative)
As these patents are very clearly about data, not documents, I don't think SGML is a valid antecedent.
That doesn't mean there aren't any. ASN.1 or S-Exprs spring to mind as candidates.
Re:SGML? (Score:5, Informative)
Close. XML is not 'intended for rendering non-document structured data'.
XML allows you to create structured data, be they documents, data interchange, paramet lists, or recipes. XML made some of the schema definitions less ambiguous and more rigid -- SGML had all sorts of things that made parsing difficult. XML didn't say that you can't use XML to store documents and must use it for data. They just said "we'll simplify the rules so that things like yacc can parse the grammar". That's all.
XML is completely purpose agnostic. So, actually, was SGML. SGML was primarily used to make structured data, but there was never an expectation that the SGML files were "document" vs "data". Though the original uses of GML/SGML may have been for marking up documents, that wasn't required.
I was using SGML for structured data interchange about 10 or 11 years ago. In the same way, I'm free to use XML for either data, documents, or anything else. The DocBook DTD was around in the SGML days, and is still in use now -- it defines documents.
Not really. The stuff in a document is data to the program that runs it. It is a perfectly valid (and well established) usage of SGML to contain what you're calling data -- config filed, parameters, etc. SGML was being used for data back in the day. Much like XML can be used to represent a 'document', or to hold 'data' -- XML-RPC or the ArborText editors are both uses of XML as an interchange format.
An instance of an XML file (ie. an XML document) is either data, document, or whatever it is intended to be.
It is completely false ot say that XML and SGML are differentiated by what the purpose of the contents of the file is. And it is completely valid to say the long history of GML/SGML/XML are so much before these patents it's not funny.
Re:SGML? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:SGML? (Score:3, Interesting)
In point of fact, XML is not just intended for rendering non-document structured data (XHTML being one example of this, just as HTML is an example of this relating to SGML).
XML and SGML both had the intent of allowing open definitions of document content within a specific framework (delimiters, keywords, general syntax rules), and XML is a restricted subset of SGML. The
Re:SGML? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:SGML? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:SGML? (Score:3, Informative)
SGML wasn't developed until the 1980s. Structural tagging existed in the 1960s. There's a difference, albeit a rather moot point, since 1985 still predates 1997.
Ahh, but I recently patented "Data" (Score:2, Funny)
Neutral? (Score:2)
Umm...Prior Art? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Umm...Prior Art? (Score:2, Insightful)
Years you say? (Score:2)
Looooosers. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops
the XML draft specification was prepared in November 1996. Good luck with that January 28, 1997 filing date.
As the article points out, XML is an outgrowth of SGML, which goes way before these filings. Yet somehow both patents manage to recognize neither SGML nor XML as prior art. Patent trolls indeed, I'm looking forward to the crunching sound their company makes when it is crushed. XML is too entrenched for the big players to ignore these losers.
Re:Looooosers. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Looooosers. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Looooosers. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Looooosers. (Score:5, Informative)
XML predates this patent filing (Score:5, Interesting)
"Microsoft cofounded the XML working group at the W3C in July 96 and actively participated in the definition of the standard."
This was used in IE4.00 for their Channel Definition File (used to schedule "Pull" of channels, an idea that's largely died). I was implementing CDF files at Scala in '96/97. The patent was filed in '97.
Re:XML predates this patent filing (Score:4, Insightful)
Patent protections (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Patent protections (Score:4, Informative)
The LZW [dogma.net] algorithm that was patented and people had to pay royalities.
With all the other posts describing prior art, I don't think this claim will hold up.
RSS... (Score:2)
I don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
There really needs to be some reform that states a company has 90 days, 1 year, or some short fixed period of time to bring a suit against a product, starting from the time it hits the market and is available to the public, the industry, or something.
The idea that you can silently sit on patents waiting for the world to embrace an obvious idea is an abuse of the system.
Re:I don't get it... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it... (Score:4, Informative)
That's why McDonalds sues everyone who uses a "McSomething", because to protect their brandname, and trademarks, they have to.
If you can show that a company knew about your possible use of their trademark and did nothing against it in a reasonable amount of time, then they lost out, and you can use it.
At this point, if you made Google at Timbuktu, and Google didn't do anything about it, then later you grow big enough to cause Google concern, they've already lost out, because the damage to your business Google at Timbuktu of losing what is now your brandname also, would be unfair, just because Google decided to wait to do something about it.
One word for you: (Score:2)
HA!
This is a joke (and a shitty one) if ever there was one.
They realize that they're suing very narrowly, anyway, right? XHTML is a subset of XML -- why not sue everyone on the web that claims compatibility with the XHTML doctype?
Absurd.
Invalid Claim (Score:5, Informative)
From the patent abstract:
The present invention simplifies the data modeling process and enables its full dynamic versioning by employing a non-hierarchical non-integrated structure to the organization of information.
XML is hierarchical data structure. Hence, his claim isn't valid.
Re:Invalid Claim (Score:5, Insightful)
Now all you need is two years and $5,000,000 for the legal fees to prove it in court!
Re:Invalid Claim (Score:3, Informative)
It's the claims that count, all they need is a claim like
12512: A method as in any of the above where the data is stored in a hiearchical format.
and they'd have XML by the
Re:Invalid Claim (Score:2)
Both non-integrated, and non-hierarchical. It is the relation that defines the organization of the data. It sounds more like they patented relational databases than XML.
Re:Invalid Claim (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, I've totally got prior art there.
I've got a great idea: (Score:4, Funny)
Bah. (Score:3, Insightful)
The present invention simplifies the data modeling process and enables its full dynamic versioning by employing a non-hierarchical non-integrated structure to the organization of information.
Uh... is it just me, or is XML ENTIRELY hierarchical?? In fact, it won't validate if you don't have elements nested properly. How can they even be serious?
USPTO - Again (Score:5, Insightful)
Charlotte, N.C.-based Scientigo owns two patents (No. 5,842,213 and No. 6,393,426) covering the transfer of "data in neutral forms." These patents, one of which was applied for in 1997, are infringed upon by the data-formatting standard XML, Scientigo executives assert.
combined with this fact:
Daly noted that companies or even individuals often make patent claims on XML. For example, Microsoft, which uses XML as the foundation of many of its products, was awarded a patent for programming techniques related to XML.
shows me that the USPTO hopelessly is fucked up.
These people are either overwhelmed by the number of claims and have no time to do the proper research before granting a patent, or they are are just plain stupid. I'm going to be generous and assume that these examiners are given a quota that they have to have resolved each week and that they haven't the time or resources to validate every claim. There is probably also a lack of expertise in the USPTO to properly vet the claims made in these applications.
Re:USPTO - Again (Score:4, Interesting)
You're exactly correct. My ex worked at the USPTO on biomedical patents. Your evaluation was based on how many patents you had processed during the previous week. She estimated that, with proper investigation of all claims, you would have to work almost 60 hours a week on average to finish your quota. At first hire, you're not expected to meet this quota, i.e. they give you time to get "up to speed". But, after they think that enough time has passed, the quota is driven pretty hard. She spoke of coworkers literally being yelled at for not finishing the proper amount of cases. They don't really care if you pass or deny them, just as long as a "processed" stamp is placed on the case.
What's worse, even with these draconian measures, they were still roughly two years behind on processing patent applications.
Re:USPTO - Again (Score:4, Insightful)
It seemed to run just dandy before the flood of business method and software patents hit the system.
Perhaps we need to define what is "patentable" rather than just throw up our hands and resign ourselves to bureaucratic mediocrity (of the system, not the examiners).
Burn all XML!!! (Score:2)
1960's prior art (Score:2)
Patents don't apply to hierarchal data (Score:3, Informative)
The present invention simplifies the data modeling process and enables its full dynamic versioning by employing a non-hierarchical non-integrated structure to the organization of information.
How exactly is XML non-hierarchal? Every bit of XML I've seen is all data contained in tags that is structured in a hierarchy of other tags. And if XML is hierarchal, then how do these patents apply to XML data, are they claiming it falls under the "non-integrated" data? Heck, I could throw together a text file and transfer the data over like that, and that would non-integrated. Are they planning on patenting plain text too? This is ludicris. Any tech company with a vested interest in software needs to voice their complains about the horrific software patent situation.
These insane patents are a good thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Had companies been less aggressive in patenting and litigating nearly anything possible, the system might go on how it is now for decades. These people are making the patent system collapse in a way that those against software patents don't have the power to do.
Re:These insane patents are a good thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:These insane patents are a good thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, I wasn't clear. People have been predicting the imminent collapse of the patent system due to ridiculous patents for about 20 years. It's still people who are doing that, and they're still wrong.
Every one of these bad cases just establishes that this is the way things are. It strengthens the patent system, and makes it more resistant to common sense. Businesses don't care if patents are bad or good; businesses don't care a
GML (Score:3, Informative)
The response this deserves (Score:5, Funny)
<bite attr="me"/>
Grounds for throwing the case out... (Score:2)
Whitespace (Score:2)
Re:Whitespace (Score:3, Funny)
You forgot to:
first!Thank God (Score:2, Funny)
patent improvement (Score:2, Interesting)
Example:
There is a patent for a widget to generate a generic document for an electronic medium. I come along and come up with a widget based on the same ideas but generates documents specially suited for view on, let's say, a handheld computer.
I would be using the same ba
This is rediculous (sp?) (Score:2)
Well, they still need dreamweaver... (Score:4, Funny)
SCO investing (Score:2, Funny)
Armchair Patent Attorneys (Score:2)
Prior Art: 1960 (Score:3, Funny)
Since XML is just LISP S-expressions made ugly, there's your prior art.
I guess they could try to patent ugliness...
Re:Prior Art: 1960 (Score:5, Funny)
I guess they could try to patent ugliness...
No good; there's prior art. [perl.org]
(ducks)
But the silver lining.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But the silver lining.. (Score:3, Funny)
Then damn it all, everyone on slashdot in their IANAL garb squashed it.
IP might be the right wing's welfare issue. (Score:3, Insightful)
Patents are supposed to help the business climate, but the program is sloppy that it exerts a chilling effect on innovation. There are no shortage of horror stories to buttress this. The bedrock value you break the whole system on is freedom itself.
Of course, the flaw in this scenario is the difference between the right and the left. We on the left have always been more of a crowd-type-mob than a mafia-type-mob. If there is no grass roots impetus, then there will be no movement.
Time for the mob... (Score:3, Funny)
ASN.1 -- More Prior Art (Score:5, Interesting)
Quotes from that web site:
Re:ASN.1 -- More Prior Art (Score:3, Informative)
Shouldn't they have defended their patent earlier? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why didn't they stand up and say anything earlier? Oh yeah...because back then it would have meant alot less money to be gained. Doesn't this amount to blackmail? Or borders on racketeering?
How abstract can a patent be? (Score:5, Funny)
From patent #5,842,213:
After re-reading that a few times, I think I've figured out that it's basically saying that this isn't an invention, it's a philosophy. This is so fscking general it could be equally validly applied to hypermedia, or frame logic, or tuple spaces, or any of the thousands of schema-less data representation models out there.
Really, the whole patent begs the following three obvious questions:
Re:How abstract can a patent be? (Score:3, Insightful)
cut to Shaolin Temple:
Master Li:
One skilled in the art will appreciate that preferred embodiments of the method of the present invention may take on many different forms depending on the particular application intended. In light of this, the preferred embodiment presented here has been designed primarily to teach many of the important aspects and implications of the method of the present invention in a context which can be readily learned.
Grasshopper:
But Master, ho
So, nobody read the patents yet...? (Score:3, Informative)
11. A method of transferring data in electronic form from a computer comprising the steps of:
a) organizing and storing the data in neutral form that is to be transferred;
b) organizing and storing the names, definitions and properties of the structural tags used to express the data in neutral form; and
c) transferring the data expressed in neutral form along with the names, definitions and properties of the structural tags that make up that neutral form data.
Which sounds to me like it would cover transferring XML with a schema embedded within the document, or transferring both the document and linked schema at the same time. Other uses of XML would still be allowed.
This claim is probably too general to survive reeximanation, though. It basically amounts to "transferring data and information about how the data is structured together". I'm sure somebody with a better knowledge of IT history than me can very easily name some prior art for that one.
12. The method of claim 11, wherein the names, definitions and properties of the structural tags used to express the data in neutral form are themselves treated as data and expressed in neutral form.
The schema is encoded in the same format as the data. Also a relevant claim to XML with embedded schemas. Rules out prior art that transferred data and a program that could process it together, unless the program was expressed in a similar structure to the data (LISP programs might count here).
13. The method of claim 11, further including the steps of:
a) adopting a compatible system of data typing;
b) using the system to express in neutral form both the data values of a set of information being transferred and the names, definitions, and properties of their associated structural tags; and
c) combining and transferring both the data values and the names, definitions and properties of the structural tags of the data values in a single neutral form transfer file.
I don't quite follow this one. Anyone got any ideas what it means?
14. A method of incorporating neutral form data values and the names, definitions and properties of their associated structural tags into an existing computer environment comprising the steps of:
a) comparing the names, definitions and properties of the components of the structural tags of the data values with those present in the existing environment;
b) entering a data value structural tag component name, definition and properties into the dictionary system of the existing environment if it is not already present; and
c) recording equivalency where a structural tag component in the dictionary system of the existing environment is found to be different but equivalent;
d) thereafter, adding the data values into the neutral form file of the existing environment.
Merging two XML files by combining their schema, then combining their data.
15. The method of claim 14, wherein the neutral form data values are new data values.
16. The method of claim 14, wherein the neutral form data values are transferred data values.
Different reasons why you may want to do 14.
17. The method of claim 14, further including the step of incorporating a unique authoring designator of the originating environment during the naming of components of structural tags to insure a lack of overlap between the structural components of a data value and those in the existing environment.
Could be construed to cover XML namespaces, if you read it right. This stands a chance of being novel, seeing as XML namespaces had not been implemented in '97 when the patent was filed.
The second patent seems less relevant -- it seems to relate to the same application that the first patent covered, but doesn't seem to add much to it that is relevant to XML. It is worth noting that the second is explicitly about a data serialization format, probably fairly similar in scope to the Java's java.io.Object[Out/In]putStream classes.
'data in neutral forms' (Score:3, Funny)
I own patents on ASCII, duh, hand over your money, NOW!!!
BTW, you all still own me royalty on my patents on 'Respiration', the process of converting oxygen to energy. I will withdraw my pending lawsuit on the entire mankind, only if the reasonable royalty of 'dollar-per-breath' is paid, or 5-for-$3.99.
What about EDI? (Score:3, Informative)
Amazing what huge companies can force their little vendors to do. Anyway, the EDI documents where essentially text documents that where defined according to a standard. The definitions where often "modified" by the companies and its partners (causing moe headaches for software vendors). But the bottom line is EDI at the end of the last century filled a niche that XML has made **MUCH** simplier. In fact XML was one of the reason why I changed my focus and got out of EDI, I saw that the Internet and XML specifically were going to make EDI nothing more than a legacy dinosaur.
-MS2k
I hear XML is like violence... (Score:3, Funny)
Its not enough to stop this silly patent.. (Score:3, Interesting)
and its officers sued under the RICO act.
Re:Can you get more generic? (Score:3, Insightful)
If the writeup is accurate (a big supposition), this is pretty absurd. I'm amused by the very notion of patenting doing things not in any particular way.
I have always held that the second ammendment has been broadly misunderstood: its goal was to allow people to overturn the governmen
Maybe, I'm just a cock-eyed optimist but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Bring it on so we can get clearer rules on when software patents have crossed over the line into the Land of Silly
Re:There Goes OpenDocument!!! (Score:2)
Doesn't matter... Microsoft would quite happily pay the royalties while watching OpenOffice.org go down the tubes...
Re:First Post! (Score:2, Troll)
The use of a 24 hour timestamp implicitly means that you do NOT use the AM or PM notion (IMO a silly notion btw...)
Just as an FYI