[11262] in www-talk@info.cern.ch
Re: Microsoft Style Sheet Patent
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ben Trafford)
Tue Jan 26 11:28:18 1999
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 11:05:16 -0500 (EST)
Old-X-Envelope-From: www-talk-request@www10.w3.org Tue Jan 26 11:05:14 1999
From: Ben Trafford <bent@dnai.com>
To: www-talk@w3.org
In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19990126121926.008d239c@bluetit>
Old-X-Envelope-To: www-talk
Resent-From: gerald@w3.org
Resent-To: www-talk@w3.org
On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, Robin Bailey wrote:
> At 15:26 25-01-99 -0500, you wrote:
> >Business as usual?:
> >
> >
> > US5860073: Style sheets for publishing system
> ...
> > Applicant(s):
> > Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA
> >
> >Issued/Filed Dates:
> > Jan. 12, 1999 / July 17, 1995
>
> If I read this correctly, doesn't it mean that MS have now been issued with
> a patent which they filed for in 95, when it was probably thought of as a
> document/spreadsheet concept, rather than the cascading stylesheet (HTML)
> concept which has developed since then?
No. The use of stylesheets to render a document has been in the
computer industry for quite a while. It's existed in markup (as in SGML)
since the early to mid 80s, I believe.
This is an old idea. Reading their patent closely, they're
attempting to claim ownership of an idea that predates any use they've had
for it by at least fifteen years.
--->Ben Trafford
