PATNEWS: Microsoft shocks Web world with another questionable patent

Tue Feb 9 16:11:11 EST 1999

Posted with the permission of Greg Aharonian

Lloyd
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From: srctran at world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)
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To: patent-news at world.std.com
Subject: PATNEWS: Microsoft shocks Web world with another questionable patent
Sender: patent-news-approval at world.std.com
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!19990209  Microsoft shocks Web world with another questionable patent

[KNEE-JERK  ON]
    I know, I don't care, the prior art sucks, Rule 56 is toiler paper,
the PTO's Software Patent Ineptitution a joke, patent bar apathetic, and
it will keep on happening, because no one takes software patent quality
seriously.
[KNEE-JERK OFF]

    Yes, everyone is outraged that last month Microsoft got a patent on
style sheets, that Microsoft didn't tell any of the standards committees,
that Microsoft did a pathetic prior art search (not as if the company is
worth billions), that the PTO issued the patent - except for those people
who aren't brain dead. The US software patent system is a registration
system - live with it.  And frankly, the W3C has their heads stuck in the
ground on these patent issues, a shortsighted attitude I hope the Open
Source people don't share.  And the worst of these dubious Internet patents
has yet to issue, let alone pre-Internet patents being stretched to cover
the Internet (yes, Sightsound is going to go down in flames - I heard they
bought the patent without checking it out too thoroughly).

    The patent abstract and first claim are attached at the end.  To further
express its contempt for serious intellectual property, Microsoft is
'offering a "free and reciprocal" license' to a patent that shouldn't have
issued in the first place.  Geesh, a few years ago I awarded Bill Gates
worst patent of the year for sticking his name on a bad patent for WYSIWYG
mailmerge that also managed to ignore a decades worth of word processing
technology - big house I guess he needs more awards.

    Microsoft is quickly becoming the next IBM of IP - rich companies
hiding behind the impotence of Rule 56 to get large numbers of computing
patents of dubious quality - are any of you surprised?  So only fools
publicly support efforts to address problems of software patenting that
are controlled by IBM and Microsoft, like the Software Puppet Ineptitution.

    The solutions exist.  Does the will?

Greg Aharonian
Internet Patent News Service
                              ====================

    But first, one of the reasons companies like IBM actually have a
fiduciary responsibility to seek out as many patents as possible, good or
crap, is Wall Street's need for affirmation:

    Greg:
    I just received my monthly investment statement from PaineWebber,
    which includes a short newsletter called "Investment Intelligence".
    PW's chief economist Dr. Maury Harris describes the indicators which
    he thinks show that the economy in 1999 will be good.  One of the
    indicators is the number of patents granted.  He calls patent grants
    a "key indicator of technological progress", and notes that the number
    of patent grants has been surging.  I assume by patent grants he means
    issued patents.  I guess he isn't a subscriber to Patent News. I wonder
    what will happen when these people find out how easy it has become to
    get a patent, and as a result, how the value of a patent has been
    degraded.  

I wonder if Dr. Harris has actually looked at many of these patents.

                              ====================

Now, back to Microsoft.

    Greg:

    You've probably seen this already, but in case you haven't...

    "[...] Many things aren't yet clear about the patent, including why
    Microsoft failed to disclose to the W3C that it had filed it. [...]

    Also unclear is why Microsoft and the U.S. Patent Office ignored
    prior art on the subject of style sheets. The application of style
    sheets "on the fly" as text is poured into a container dates back
    to the 1960s, when people first began to use batch pagination in
    conjunction with book, directory, and database publishing."

    Check out http://webreview.com/wr/pub/1999/02/05/style/index.html

                              ====================

You can't ignore what you don't want to look for.

                              ====================

    Hi Greg.

    I am one of your subscribers as well as a software developer heavily
    committed to the family of XML standards being developed by the W3C.

    I think that you may have already seen the following news (Wired ran
    the story on Thur 4 Feb), but I am sending this along for your
    information and, I hope, to provoke the outrage at this ignorant
    disregard of prior art which you do so well

    http://www.camworld.com/misc/mscsspatent.txt

>From THE BULLETIN: SEYBOLD NEWS & VIEWS ON ELECTRONIC
PUBLISHING, Volume 4, No. 19, February 4, 1999

http://www.seyboldreport.com/

MICROSOFT AWARDED STYLE SHEET PATENT

In January, the U.S. Patent Office awarded Microsoft a patent that could
have a major impact on Web standards. The patent, which broadly covers "the
use of style sheets in an electronic publishing system," appears to
describe some of the key concepts used in the World Wide Web Consortium's
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and eXtensible Style Language (XSL) standards.
Specifically, it claims that the method of applying style sheets in
documents rendered by the customer's computer (as is done by all Web
browsers) is different from previous style sheet implementations.

We're not sure yet just how much of the CSS and XSL recommendations might
be covered under Microsoft's patent or whether the patent will have any
direct effect on how vendors and developers implement the standards. Thomas
Reardon, the director of standards for Microsoft, wouldn't confirm that the
patent applies specifically to the CSS or XSL standards, but he did admit
that it "appears to overlap" with both W3C standards. Reardon defended
Microsoft's ownership of the patent, however, stating that the company was
offering a "free and reciprocal" license to any company or group that uses
style sheet technology in its products. "These are the most liberal
licensing terms out there," Reardon noted, adding that it wasn't even clear
whether other companies would need to enter a licensing agreement with
Microsoft in order to use the technology.

***Questions***

Many things aren't yet clear about the patent, including why Microsoft
failed to disclose to the W3C that it had filed it. Reardon stated that he
wasn't even aware of the patent's existence while he served on the original
CSS working group during the summer of 1995 -- the same time that Microsoft
filed its patent application. The patent application does, however, include
several references to W3C documents, including Hakon Lie's original
proposal for CSS; this suggests that Microsoft was aware of the
consortium's work on style sheets and that the company knew its patent
application was relevant to that work.

Also unclear is why Microsoft and the U.S. patent office ignored prior art
on the subject of style sheets. The application of style sheets "on the
fly" as text is poured into a container dates back to the 1960s, when
people first began to use batch pagination in conjunction with book,
directory, and database publishing. It has been used ever since in
batch-pagination systems, such as Datalogics, Xyvision, Penta and Miles 33,
all of which kept styles separate from tagged text and implemented styles
with sample templates. The use of hierarchical (in the W3C's parlance,
cascading) style sheets in an "electronic publishing system" was elegantly
implemented in the early 1980s by Texet. Today, the term "electronic
publishing system" has changed meaning to refer to electronic delivery and
page makeup, but the concepts of applying style sheets to tagged
information remain the same.

***Our Take***

Every vendor is entitled to protect its intellectual property to the
fullest extent of the law. In the U.S, you can't patent software per se,
but you can patent a process or method. As with any patent, Microsoft's
style sheet patent may be challenged in court. The Patent Office can also
re-examine its earlier findings and rescind the patent award.

Reardon claims that this patent could actually protect Web standards by
preventing other vendors from engaging in "standards terrorism" with
intellectual property claims of their own. That comment strikes us as
disingenuous: When participating in standards-setting bodies, the protocol
is to reveal to other members any applicable patents your organization may
claim so that you may be duly compensated should the group adopt your
method as the standard. While we can't prove that Microsoft deliberately
filed the patent in order to get a proprietary grip on the standard, the
fact that it didn't reveal the filing during the CSS definition process
shows bad faith toward the W3C and its process. If Microsoft really wants
to protect Web standards, the company should immediately turn over its
patent to the W3C and renounce all claims on the technology. Any other
action, however charitable, casts serious doubts on Microsoft's commitment
to any public standards process and endangers the Web's success as an open
platform.

                              ====================

5,860,073          
Style sheets for publishing system 
                                   Abstract
The use of style sheets in an electronic publishing system is described.
A style sheet is a collection of formatting information, such as font and
tabs in a textual document. The style sheets described herein are applied
to individual display regions (controls) on a page. Unlike previous systems,
the display regions in this system do not contain any text at the time the
style sheet is applied. Rather, the text, or other media such as graphics,
is poured into the display region when the title is rendered on the
customer's computer. 
Assignee:    Microsoft Corporation
Filed:       July 17, 1995                                                  

Other References                                                            

Lie, "Cascading HTML style sheets--a proposal",
    http://www.w3.org/People/howcome/p/cascade.html, 10 Oct., 1994
Lie et al., "Cascading Style Sheets, level 1",                              
    http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/REC-CSS1, Dec. 17, 1996
Gifford, "Polychannel systems for mass digital communication",
    Comm. of ACM, v.33, n. 2, p. 141(11), Feb. 1990
Jackson, "The Published Word",
    PC User, n. 137, p. 32(4), Jul. 18, 1990
Journalist User's Guide: Your Personalized Newspaper for Compuserve
    PED Software Corp., pp. 1-111, Jan. 1994
Huser et al., "The Individualized Electronic Newspaper: An Application      
    Challenging Hypertext Technology", GMD Report No. GMD-664, Jul. 1992
Sterahn et al., "Positioning HTML Elements with Cascading Style Sheets",    
    http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/WD-positioning, Jan. 31, 1997
Hughes, "Thinking about style sheets",                                      
    http:www.w3.org/Style/mail/kh-2-May-95.html, May 2, 1995
Duncan, Rey, "Power Programming: An HTML Primer",
    PC Magazine, Jun. 13, 1995, pp. 261-270
Microsoft Word, "About Styles", Chp. 9, pp. 178-183 and Document        
    Templates Chp. 10, pp. 205-224, User's Guide, 1993-1994,
    Microsoft Corporation

Primary Examiner: Burwell; Joseph R. 
Attorney, Agent or Firm: Banner & Witcoff Ltd. 

                                    Claims

1. A method of styling document content, comprising the steps of: 

    creating a title including page layouts representing the appearance
    of pages of the title; 

    creating a first style sheet container storing a first plurality of
    styles; 

    creating a second style sheet container storing a second plurality
    of styles; 

    creating at least one content container for storing document content;

    providing a first control on a first one of the page layouts for
    delineating a first page layout area where content is to be rendered;

    providing a second control on a second one of the page layouts for
    delineating a second page layout area where content is to be rendered;

    linking the content container with the first and second controls;

    linking the first control to the first style sheet container;

    linking the second control to the second style sheet container;

    rendering content in the first page layout area according to at least
    one of the first plurality of styles; and

    rendering content in the second page area according to at least one of
    the second plurality of styles. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Lloyd A. Davidson
Life Sciences Librarian and Head, Access Services 
Seeley G. Mudd Library for Science and Engineering
2233 N. Campus Drive
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL  60208

Ldavids at nwu.edu  (847)491-2906 (Voice)    (847)491-4655 (fax)