Implementation of this subject matter may depend on licensing essential claims of patents issued by the South African Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office to Microsoft Corporation, for example ZA200303346 “Word-processing document stored in a single XML file that may be manipulated by applications that understand XML”. The committee was also of the view that there have been sufficient concerns raised about the robustness of the Microsoft ‘Open Specification Promise’ and the Microsoft ‘Covenant not to sue’ as to warrant caution.
The patent holder should be encouraged to disclose, and explicitly licence or surrender such IP or patents that may pose a risk to implementation of the standard.
Part 4, pp5-1854, WordProcessingML Reference Material
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Proposed Disposition of DIS 29500 Comment ZA-0008 (Modified: 2008-01-04) DIS29500 fully complies with the Ecma and ISO/IEC/ITU IPR policies. ISO and IEC have received the appropriate IP declarations related to DIS29500 — these are on file in their database and ISO/IEC may be queried about them. All IPR matters should be referred to ITTF, as prescribed in the JTC 1 Directives for the Fast-Track process. National Bodies are respectfully encouraged to review the existing ISO/IEC/ITU Common Patent Policy, as requests to implement changes or extensions to this IPR Policy should happen through normal ISO/IEC processes and not through the DIS29500 BRM or vote. As to copyrights, please see JTC 1 Directives Section 10.2, which assigns DIS copyright to ISO and IEC. ISO and IEC representatives have repeatedly stated that they believe there are no IPR issues that would cause concern with the ISO/IEC/ITU Common Patent Policy or the adoption of DIS 29500, as explained in item 4.1 of the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 FAQ on DIS 29500 (which is publicly available at http://www.jtc1sc34.org/repository/0932.htm ): 4.1 Will IPR issues be discussed at the BRM? No. IPR issues in this process are the exclusive preserve of the ITTF. IPR decisions have previously been delegated by all the ISO and IEC members (NBs) to the CEOs of IEC and ISO, and they in turn have examined them and found no outstanding problems. NBs seeking reassurance in such matters must pursue them through other avenues than the BRM. Ecma has the following comments: Contributions to Ecma were made under the Ecma Code of Conduct in Patent Matters, which we believe to be in line with ISO/IEC/ITU Common Patent Policy. As a member of Ecma, Microsoft has made information available to Ecma regarding any essential patent claims Microsoft may have in connection with ECMA-376, and this declaration was provided to JTC 1 together with the Fast-Track document. Ecma has been informed by ISO that Microsoft has also submitted to the ISO Central Secretariat a Patent Declaration Form related to licensing of any of its essential patent claims that are necessary to implement DIS 29500. Pursuant to such Patent Declaration Form, Microsoft has provided assurances to ITTF that any such essential claims vis-à-vis DIS 29500 will be available for full or partial implementations under three different approaches (from which an implementer can select). These options include Microsoft’s Open Specification Promise (see http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx ), Microsoft’s Covenant http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA102134631033.aspx ) and a royalty-free Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (RAND-Z) license. The OSP enables both open source and commercial software to implement DIS 29500. See http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx#EZCAC for statements from the open source community. We note that a growing number of implementations of ECMA-376 are becoming available, including those released by Apple (Mac OS X Leopard, iWork 08, iPhone), Adobe (InDesign), Microsoft (Office 2007, Office 2003, Office XP, Office 2000, Office 2008 Mac OS X), Novell (Suse Open Office) , Google (Search / Preview), Mindjet (MindManager), Intergen, OpenXML/ODF Translator (Open Source project on Sourceforge), Dataviz (DocumentsToGo on Palm OS, MacLinkPlus on Mac OS X Leopard), NeoOffice, Altova (XMLSpy), MarkLogic (XML Content Server), Datawatch (Monarch Pro), QuickOffice (QuickOffice Premier 5.0 on Symbian), Altsoft (XML2PDF Server 2007) and those under development by Corel (WordPerfect), AbiWord, Gnome (GNumeric), Xandros, Linspire, Turbolinux and others. These implementations are now available on many platforms, including Linux, the Macintosh, Windows, and handheld devices (PalmOS, Symbian, Windows Mobile). Due to ISO/IEC’s position on IPR issues as they have explained above, no changes to DIS 29500 are proposed. Similar Comments: AU-0002 , BG-0002 , CH-0004 , CH-0019 , GR-0001 , GR-0015 , IN-0006 , IN-0070 , IR-0057 , KE-0074 , KE-0075 , NZ-0010 , NZ-0054 , PT-0001 , PT-0003 , PT-0004 , US-0003 ,
Does not need fixing
Patents are openly viewable at the patent offices.
Should be tagged as Legal Issues.
HAL states that the patents are openly viewable at the patent offices BUT do we know all the patents that apply so you can look them up in the first place.
The patent holder SHOULD have to disclose ALL patents and licence or surrender such IP.
@Warren
Point is that for every technology you use you are bound by existing patents. Micrsoft has given right on their patents for OOXML implementation but that does not in any way dimishing the requirment for anybody implementing technology to verify wheather or not he breaches patents.
also notworthy is that the south african comment here reaises questions on the robustness of the open specification promise but the IEC en ISO CEO’s have apperantly confirmed that they are satisfied with this licencing (As can be read on Alex Browns FAQ page).
http://www.jtc1sc34.org/repository/0932.htm#q4-1
This comment could therefore even be seen as resolved/solved.