Since Microsoft got slammed with the recent i4i patent money grab I have a big concern. My own product in development uses XML in a similar way to the Custom XML feature of Word
I am very annoyed that i4i can get a patent for embedding some XML and mapping it, it's just a bit too simple and already common place
I am changing anyway. Maybe I'll use JSON and Orderly?
Is anyone else going to have to change?
Any recommendation on how and what to change?
The very first thing to do is look at the patent, and try to understand what it actually does. You can also provide a detailed explanation of your software workings and ask an attorney to compare that to the given patent.
In any case, it's not Custom XML in general which has been hit by i4i. It's a very specific implementation of Custom XML functionality which is problematic.
I found this nice, short explanation on [this website1:
The i4i patent describes a document format and method of encoding where the document content — stored in the “raw content area” — “is totally unstructured and has no embedded metacodes in the data stream.” The i4i patent further states that the document structure’s definition is described in a separate “metacode map” where “for each metacode applied to the content, an entry in the metacode map is created which describes the metacode and gives its position.”
Whatever you do, first understand what has been patented.