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There are still a few months to fix this, but for now the US Patent and Trademark Office's (USPTO) Acting Commissioner for Patents, Andrew Faile, and Chief Information Officer, Jamie Holcombe, have announced that starting January 1st, 2022, the USPTO will institute a surcharge for applicants that are not locked into Microsoft products via the proprietary DOCX format. From that date onwards, the USPTO will move away from PDF and require all filers to use that proprietary format or face an arbitrary surcharge when filing.
First, we delayed the effective date for the non-DOCX surcharge fee to January 1, 2022, to provide more time for applicants to transition to this new process, and for the USPTO to continue our outreach efforts and address customer concerns. We've also made office actions available in DOCX and XML formats and further enhanced DOCX features, including accepting DOCX for drawings in addition to the specification, claims, and abstract for certain applications.
One out of several major problems with the plans is that DOCX is a proprietary format. There are several variants of DOCX and each of them are really only supported by a single company's products. Some other products have had progress in beginning to reverse engineering it, but are hindered by the lack of documentation. DOCX is a competitor to the fully-documented, open standard OpenDocument Format, also known as ISO/IEC 26300.
DOCX is not to be confused with OOXML, though it often is. While OOXML, also known as ISO/IEC 29500, is technically standardized, it is incompletely documented and only vaguely related to DOCX. The DOCX format itself is neither fully documented nor standard. So the USPTO is also engaged in spreading disinformation by asserting that it is.
Previously:
(2015) Microsoft Threatened the UK Over Open Standards
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday May 26 2021, @01:34PM (12 children)
Consider the long term benefits of locking patents into Microsoft DOCX format.
Patents last a long time. Way too long.
Patents last longer than Microsoft's interest in backward compatibility, despite Microsoft investments to make its software the most backward. (see: MS Office, Plays For Sure, Zune, Windows phone 6, Windows Phone 7, Windows Phone 8, Windows Vista, Windows 8, Visual Basic, Windows for tablets, Windows on ARM, and a list of other internal technologies that they lost interest in, but not as quickly as Google loses interest in its own products. Yet Microsoft makes sure to keep important things like 16 bit and 32 bit components.)
Raise your hand if you've ever had a Microsoft Office application that was unable to open a Microsoft document created from a significantly older version of that application?
And what is the reason for this (in)sane behavior? Earlier binary Microsoft docs were once little more than memory binary images of internal data structures, or so I once read. This is what made it extremely difficult even for Microsoft to completely reverse engineer. One would have to look at the source code to analyze what fields and values were where and what they actually meant vs what they might be labelled or what the comments might say.
Imagine a bright and glorious future where patents are enforced, but nobody anywhere can produce a readable copy of the patent, but can produce proof the patent was granted.
We should also consider the mechanism by which the USPTO grants patents.
The patent examination process is not well understood by most people. Once a patent is received, the patent examiner carefully places the application into a room full of other patent applications. Then kittens are released into the room with PATENT GRANTED stamps affixed to their feet. The kittens are then returned to their holding area to await the next round of patent examination. The patent examiners collect the applications from the floor and look to see which patent applications were granted.
The USPTO is going to need additional funding to have a new process in which they carefully track the existence of temporary internal printed copies of patents to ensure their destruction once the patent is fully examined and granted.
Revolver, or semi automatic modified to be fully automatic -- which is best for senior citizens in their porch swings?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 26 2021, @05:00PM (10 children)
I'm sorry, hasn't Libre Office supported .docx format for like the last 15 years or something? It's not exactly a lock-in format if you can access it with well supported FOSS.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 26 2021, @08:45PM
Sort-of. I had a resume done professionally, and the final product included a pdf and a docx. The latter was not at all usable in Libre Office thanks to all the fancy formatting. I could open the docx to look at it, but that was about it, and the layout didn't match the pdf.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday May 26 2021, @09:04PM (1 child)
But why say "Hey, if it won't open in MS-Office, just open it in Libreoffice." when you could just say "Hey, everyone just use Libreoffice and fuck MS0Office."
Why make everyone use MS-Office, but sometimes you'll have to use Libreoffice, especially when you'll have to use it for older docs? Why not just Libreoffice from the start?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 27 2021, @01:22AM
There was a time around 2005 when I was using Open Office because M$ office couldn't f-ing handle what I was trying to do (embed more than 6 high resolution photographs in a single document.) Same format, but if I edited it in "real" MS Office, it would lock up or crash, but the same document with 12+ embedded photos from my digital camera would edit save and print just fine from Open Office, and ironically after creating it in Open Office you could even view it in MS Office O.K. but just don't mess with the embedded photos in Office 2004 or whatever it was unless you wanted to see a BSOD.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday May 26 2021, @09:17PM (6 children)
That is not an excuse to require important public documents to be locked in to a format belonging to one company.
PDF viewers are more widely supported than anything that can read DOCX.
Revolver, or semi automatic modified to be fully automatic -- which is best for senior citizens in their porch swings?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 26 2021, @11:41PM (5 children)
I guess the point is that M$ doesn't exactly own the format.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday May 27 2021, @12:30AM (4 children)
But they do, and it's pointed out in the summary:
Which is Libreoffice's problem. If Microsoft documented the format then Libreoffice could support it properly, which is why Microsoft don't document it properly.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 27 2021, @01:19AM (3 children)
Well, from a practical aspect, I have submitted .docx documents to all kinds of people over the past decade+ without ever paying for a M$ license. Stay away from the fancy formatting and it renders fine on both sides.
Is it right? No. There should be an open standard that both sides support 100%. Will that happen? Doesn't seem likely- but from a practical view: you can submit all kinds of .docx documents without ever paying the M$ tax - and as others have pointed out: 95%+ of patent applications are submitted by lawyers who 99.9%+ have M$ licenses anyway. Is it right? No. Does it matter? In all ways but the idealistic, no.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday May 27 2021, @01:45AM (2 children)
While that is largely true, but if Microsoft documented the format properly that wouldn't matter either.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 27 2021, @02:15AM (1 child)
Yeah, M$ hasn't been properly documenting their shit since forever. In 1991 I got a persistent "Error 67" from MS DOS 3.whatever it was. Thing was, the printed manual only described up through error 64.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday May 27 2021, @03:06AM
You're right, and that is the point. If they documented stuff they'd open themselves up to competition.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 27 2021, @02:14AM
It's not like Microsoft has a monopoly on this though. TaxCut 2020 won't open my return for 2018.