The New Zealand Open Source Society (NZOSS) is claiming a moral victory over Microsoft’s patent of XML schema after the software giant made changes to its patent.
In July last year the society lodged an objection to Microsoft’s patent which governs "word processing document[s] stored in a single XML file that may be manipulated by applications that understand XML".
Now, however, Microsoft has amended its patent and the society’s president, Peter Harrison, says the changes are such that the society is no longer concerned about it.
"The patent will no longer cover the XML file formats that Microsoft is using and therefore anyone is free to interoperate with Microsoft file formats without fear of patent litigation from this particular patent".
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/E6D44C4600041E39CC2571D4007DF1C8