MS patents style sheets

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

How's this one?  Picked it up from another mailing list, which cited the 4
February 1999 Seybold Report:

>In January, the U.S. Patent Office awarded Microsoft a patent 
>that could have a major impact on Web standards....We're not 
>sure yet just how much of the CSS and XSL recommendations might 
>be covered under Microsoft's patent or whether the patent 
>will have any direct effect on how vendors and developers 
>implement the standards. 

Don't know how much more I can report without infringing Seybold too
horribly.  They have ties to XML.com, so we may see a story come out of
there soon.  If you have access to the report, track it down, and if you
don't, order it as a back issue.  It's a good story.

Elliotte Rusty Harold's Cafe Con Leche (http://metalab.unc.edu/xml/) picked
it up, and has a pointer to the patent:

http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US05860073__&language=en

Rumor also has it that the Web Standards Project will have some comments
soon: http://www.webstandards.org/.


Simon St.Laurent
XML: A Primer / Building XML Applications (March)
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http://www.simonstl.com


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