This is ridiculous. A small US company called Scientigo own two patents which cover the transfer of data in “neutral forms” claim that the data-formatting standard XML infringes on their patents! And of course their master plan is to collect royalties from software companies and large organisations which use XML. EVERYBODY uses XML!
“Patent troll” is a good description for these sort of companies. They’ve had one of the patents since ’97 and the only make their claim now? They’ll have a tough time getting anywhere with their claim though. XML is derived from SGML which is from the 80s, and SGML itself is based on computer concepts from the 60s so according to Patent lawyer Bruce Sunstein “if Scientigo’s claims were ever litigated, the company would have to address all the prior work on data formats.” Hopefully they’ll get nothing out of this, feckers.
Edited 27th Oct: Wade Roush covers the issue on Technology Review.
They’ll have a tough time getting anywhere with their claim though.
How much are you willing to bet…?
Well i’m not a betting man but they’ve a tough job in this case.
Scumbags the lot of them. I read something similar yesterday at ZDNet UK about some company that believes they’ve acquired patent rights to the JPEG format and are sending out invoices left right and centre.
Software Patents (especially in the US) are becoming a joke, and if what I understand about the EU software patent directive is right, ours will soon be worse!
I’m going to stop thinking about it now before it depresses and/or angers me to the point where I start punching walls.
You may be interested in this Beano:
“The Public Patent Foundation has filed a request at the US Patent Office to revoke Compression Labs’ data compression patent, which it is reportedly using to harrass anyone that implements the JPEG format.”
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/18/0154208&from=rss