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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 PinkyGigglebrain on Wednesday May 26 2021, @05:11PM
You have a valid point, everyone has access to Microsoft's current DOCX format in someway or other. FOR NOW.
What happen in 5-10 years when MS stops supporting their current DOCX version?
If your going to say that the Patent office will just need to keep older version of Word handy for this kind of situation your ignoring, or are oblivious to, the logistical and licensing nightmare that would entail. Not to mention the extra burden on the IT staff to archive and maintain the older versions. Add in the fact that MS will eventually stop providing stand alone versions of Office/Word and move everything to the Cloud this move by the USPTO, if they follow through with it, is going to cause major headaches down the road on so many levels its not funny.
Over the years I've had several situations where someone would come to me and tell me that they can't open this or that document in Word, but it worked fine with the last version of Word. When I looked at the files in question it would invariably turn out that it was in a format that MS used to use and stopped supporting in the latest version off Office/Word. For some of them there was a plug in that would re-enable support, for others the only opton was to try and find an old version of Office or use Open/Libre Office which ironically has better support for older MS formats than MS themselves provide, to open and convert the document to something the users current version of Word could open.
Legal documents need to be stored in an open, well documented, and widely available format that is accessible by all without having to jump through hoops or pay additional costs to some corporation for the ability to read and use what should be freely available.
Microsoft's DOCX format is none of those.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."