In article
<dc716db0-5266-4fcd-9d31-135aa9fbcd19@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Ramon F Herrera <ramon@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I read somewhere that Microsoft has hundreds or even more than a
> thousand patents which are related to XML.
>
> Can someone confirm/deny this?
I'd be rather surprised if anyone here could confirm or deny that you
have read something! :-)
But seriously, I suppose it depends on what you mean by "related".
Doing a search at the PTO site for patents that have "Microsoft" in the
assignee name field and XML in the abstract, I come up with 99, but many
of those just happen to specify that they use XML to store something--do
those count as being related to XML?
Anyway, if you want to check those out yourself, and decide which are
related, go here:
<http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html>
then click on "Quick Search", and put Microsoft in term 1, XML in term
2, and change field 1 to assignee name and field 2 to abstract, and you
should get the list I got (well, after you hit "search" :-)).
A similar search, but looking for XML in the claims, returns 213
patents. Again, though, a lot comes down to what it means to be related
to XML. There was one there, for instance, that had to do with speech
processing for telephony. In the claims, XML shows up as part of a
dependent claim. Let me digress to explain a little bit about patent
claims. There are two kinds of claims: independent claims and dependent
claims. An independent claim looks like something like this:
5. A method for blah blah blah comprising the steps of yadda yadda
yadda.
It stands alone. A dependent claim looks something like this:
6. The method of claim 5 where the step of yadda is done by a Nun
lathered in baby oil.
A dependent claim narrows down the claim it depends on. (BTW, a
dependent claim can be dependent on an earlier dependent claim, so we
could have a further dependent claim:
7. The method of claim 6 where the Nun is a she-male.
and so on).
That's how XML comes up in this speech processing patent. They have a
claim. Then they narrow it in a dependent claim. Then that dependent
claim is further narrowed in another dependent claim, which involves a
loadable grammar. Then, THAT dependent claim is further narrowed to
"The method of claim 12 wherein the grammar is loaded from an XML file".
I don't think I'd count this patent as being related to XML.
I can't think of any good way to do a search to just get ones that are
actually about XML, although I'd guess that most of those would have XML
mentioned in the abstract, so that list of 99 is probably the place to
start looking.
--
--Tim Smith
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