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.
SGML? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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.
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: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:There Goes OpenDocument!!! (Score:1, Informative)
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.
GML (Score:3, Informative)
Re:SGML? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Looooosers. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Looooosers. (Score:2, Informative)
More than that, the patent specifies non-heirarchical. XML is specifically heirarchical.
What they actually seem to have patented here is delimited ASCII.
KFG
Re:Patenting Patents (Score:1, Informative)
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.
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: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.
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 balls (pending prior art).
In fact in the first patent [freepatentsonline.com] the word "hiearchical" doesn't occur in any of the claims at all, and claim 14 describes the process by which most XML parsers work (matching data in the document to variables in the program). The second patent [freepatentsonline.com] again doesn't mention the word anywhere in the claims, but the claims pretty much describe hierarchical data ("sub-clusters", etc).
SGML should be our prior-art saving grace though, even after all of these years of pushing "separation of presentation and data", I'm sure you can find someone who can argue that presentation is data
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.
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.
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:SGML? (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:The response this deserves (Score:2, Informative)
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.]
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
Re:Looooosers. (Score:3, Informative)
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:One word - EDIFACT (Score:3, Informative)
Re:ASN.1 -- More Prior Art (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.
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.
I've got a better one. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:What about the Patent examiner responsible? (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, they have some fact to them. I am an ex-examiner who left back in 1991. My "expectancy" was, as I recall, 17.4 hours/balanced disposal - a "balanced disposal" is the average of all first actions on the merits and all disposals (allowances, abandonments and appeal briefs). Thus, for each application, you get one count when you act on it the first time and another count when it's disposed. Thus, two counts divided by 2 = 1 balanced disposal, or, using a common formula expressed in the Office, (n + d)/2.
Yes, that is correct. Based on my explanation for how production is calculated. if an application is issued on the first action (i. e., no rejections, or formal objections or restrictions, etc.) then you get both a "new" count and a "disposal" count; one balanced disposal in one, relatively easy to do action.
The only check against examiners just willy-nilly "putting a blue slip" on every application ( a reference to the old days when a small, blue colored multi-carbon form giving the classification data for the allowed application was stapled to front inside face of the case file wrapper) is what PTO management policies (both stated and actually done in practice) do. Since production is automatically monitored and tracked (religiously, along with other "assembly line metrics, such as acting on responses within two months of submission, first action on the oldest new application every two bi weeks, etc.), but checking the merits of the examination including the search area (which is recorded), evaluating all the prior art of record in the case, reading and understanding the application, and, most significantly, checking the prior art against the claims) is a lot of work for the supervisor, and with the upper managment's constant screaming to get pendency down, you can guess what gets emphasized and monitored like a hawk, and what gets decidedly pushed back as "nice to have", but "don't let it get in your way of making your numbers".
The reaction to this by working examiners runs the gamut, as in any organization with multiple players. Some, clearly, just take the attitude "I'll just give them wnat they want". Depending on their orginizational political skills they know how not to raise alarms about pushing out work that "looks" shoddy; managers, who have to report to their bosses who are also monitoring the numbers of the units mangaed by their reports, quickly learn to take the attitude "you have to do the best job you can within the time alloted." These examiners usually get rapid promotions up the top working grade of "Primary Examiner" (The production requirememnts go up with each promotion) and are likely candidates to move into management, thus, perpetuating the management culture. Other examiners, realizing that the time provided is inadequate, work extra hours to meet the numeric metrics, and, if they still end up slipping and can't produce cosnsistantly over 100% end up being harassed by production-obsessed managers. Of course, such examiners tend never to make it to management, and, the first time they end a quarter with production below 95% (marginal) or 90% (unsatisfactory) they will immediately have actions taken against them. If they don't get over 95% they get fired, no matter how good their cases are.
From what I've heard from a friend who still works there, t