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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: 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.
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