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Microsoft didn't mention this when they should have!

whisperycat 19th Aug 2009

Great day for Open Office - i4i said it has looked at OpenOffice and found it doesn?t infringe on its patents. Oh dear. Poor Microsoft.

From Groklaw -
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090817235436439

"I have a question for Microsoft. Why didn't they tell us about this i4i patent litigation during the OOXML ISO process? Didn't we need to know?

Anyone recall anyone mentioning an i4i patent that could make customXML unusable in the entire United States?

The litigation began on March 8, 2007 when i4i filed its complaint. That is back in the very earliest days of the OOXML saga, when Ecma was answering some critics inside the ISO process who thought Ecma 376, later to be named OOXML, shouldn't be put on the fast track. It was officially put on the fast track by ISO a couple of days later anyhow. Remember all that? That's pretty much how OOXML got to be a standard, actually, I'd say, in microcosm. Techies pointed out issues, and some higher up would say, So what? Over and over and over. Until it was over. And now look what you've got. You should listen to techies, folks, when the issue is tech.