Microsoft applies for "RSS patent"

by Jeremy Reimer

Late last week, right before the Christmas season began, Microsoft filed a patent related to using RSS services inside a web browser and throughout an operating system. The patent was filed with the United States Patent Office (USPTO) by Microsoft employee Amar S. Gandhi, with seven other names on the patent.

Is Microsoft trying to patent RSS technology as a whole or RSS readers in specific, as has been reported elsewhere? Not really. The patent itself makes no claims over the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) specification itself. Rather, the patent describes a way for an operating system to centrally manage RSS subscriptions via an API which can be used by other applications to access and/or modify the subscription data.

The patent itself describes the problem this is aimed at, in more detail: "Each RSS application will typically have its own list of subscriptions. When the list of subscriptions is small, it is fairly easy for a user to enter and manage those subscriptions across the different applications. As the list of subscriptions grows, however, management of the subscriptions in connection with each of these different RSS-enabled applications becomes very difficult. Thus, it is very easy for subscription lists to become unsynchronized."

In addition, the API can be used within applications to publish stories directly to a blog or other content-managed web site. In theory, this allows developers to quickly add RSS support to their own applications via the API.

The Microsoft RSS Team blog has new entries responding to concerns that the patent is too broad. "First these patents describe specific ways to improve the RSS end-user and developer experience (which we believe are valuable and innovative contributions)—they do not constitute a claim that Microsoft invented RSS." The blog goes on to mention that Microsoft has already released various Atom and RSS extensions under a Creative Commons license, and points out that both Google and Apple have applied for RSS-related patents in the past.

Still, because Microsoft is Microsoft, any move they make in the legal and patent sphere is bound to come under intense scrutiny. The company has a culture of applying for as many patents as possible (one program manager I talked to said his higher-ups were always suggesting he patent everything he could). Many of these are "defensive patents" designed to prevent Microsoft from being sued by other patent-holding companies. However, the issue of software patents in general is still a very contentious one, with some people believing that they should not exist at all.

(c) www.arstechnica.com