Patents are granted on vague descriptions of technology that can be broadly interpreted by an ignorant judicial system, assisted by laws that allow “venue shopping” and other factors that favor the trolls.

Instead of serving the purpose for which it was originally intended, protecting an INDIVIDUAL’s claim to a specific invention or process, the US Patent system (and liberal courts) have become a weapon that tech companies use in a war against each other to see who can “own the internet” first.

If you look back at intellectual property lawsuits around inventions such as “Pong” or intermittent windshield wipers, the infringing companies CLEARLY STOLE the intellectual property, and it took tremendous effort to PROVE it. Now, it seems anyone who mentions “computer” in a patent is automatically granted intellectual property protection, regardless of prior art, common use, or any other litmus test. If Robert Kearns had only known this, he could have named his invention “COMPUTERIZED intermittent wipers, now with XML!”. Ford would NEVER HAVE STOOD A CHANCE.

Considering that even the informal use of XML predates the 1998 i4i patent, it seems to me that a METHOD for reading and writing XML would be “prior art”, considering that all methods are relatively similar, but that’s just me…….. It seems to me that only a PROPRIETARY method would qualify for a patent, and this PROPRIETARY method would have to be attractive to the market, meaning a PROPRIETARY and SLOW method would not be something of interest to Microsoft (except perhaps to be included in Vista). If Microsoft is truly using someone else’s PROPRIETARY method, enjoying competitive advantage, then discovering that would require reverse-engineering or decompiling code, both of which are in violation of Microsoft’s license agreements. So HOW EXACTLY was this discovered?