Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday May 26 2021, @01:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the vendor-capture dept.

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


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday May 27 2021, @12:29PM (1 child)

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Thursday May 27 2021, @12:29PM (#1139264) Homepage
    So you're saying we need a Rich Text Format instead? Or if we wish parts of the document (such as a ToC, index, or body text) to be able to refer to other parts of the document (such as sections, images, or tables within), or even extern documents, then some kind of Hypertext Markup Language?
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday June 01 2021, @01:50AM

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 01 2021, @01:50AM (#1140631) Homepage Journal

    Not RTF. ODT. or, equivalenty, ODF.