IT Curmudgeon

In a ruling issued on August 11, 2009, Texas judge Leonard Davis, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, ruled that current versions of Microsoft Word substantially infringe on U.S. Patent No. 5,787,449 issued in 1998 and held by a company named "i4i Limited Partnership".

The patent claims the rights to separating markup codes from content in documents.

This patent was issued after substantial work was done around the world by collaborative groups on XML, SGML and HTML using style sheets and other methods of separating codes from content. Many people believe that the patent was issued in spite of being based on prior art. This means that the information in the patent was publicly available before the patent was issued. The judge ruled that the patent was valid, however.

I have strongly advocated revamping our patent laws to prevent patents being issued based on loose software "concepts" like this. Rather than protecting innovation, as patent laws are intended to do, these conceptual patents prevent companies from innovating, and are granted to individuals who are not required to show specific techniques that could be improved upon with subsequent patents.

It is time to change our software patent laws before it turns into a lottery system for people who can afford to bury the system with general patent filings. Some would contend that this has already happened.