Microsoft offers patent protection for Office binaries
InfoWorld | at | by Mike
Microsoft said on Friday that it has added Office binary formats to a list of technologies that are protected against patent-violation claims, answering criticism from some involved in the OOXML file-format standards process.
The OOXML format is being considered as an international standard by the ISO, but translation between the original Office binaries and OOXML is necessary for there to be seamless document exchange between older versions of Office and Office 2007. Corporate developers and makers of other office productivity products need access to the formats in order to write converters between Microsoft's format and the possible standard.