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The European Union says that patents related to an open standard must be made royalty-free, not just permitted for use within the standard.
Though the OOXML specification is publicly available, patents make improving it difficult, since Microsoft only permits the patents relevant to the specification to be used within the specification's definition. This means that it's hard for competitors to embrace, extend, and extinguish the patent but it also means that only Microsoft can improve the specification. Since modification of the specification is severely limited, it is not open by any definition of the word; at most it's on par with freeware software.
The above follows open source software, which has different prerequisites for openness than open standards, but OOXML is still a proprietary format. Though it has promised not to, Microsoft has made no legal assurance that it won't sue implementers for patent infringement. SteveSims ( talk) 02:41, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
If I understand correctly, not all plain text encodings are open (i.e. previous extensions to ASCII before UTF-8). This is probably why it was listed as "ASCII -- plain text" rather than "Plain text -- ASCII, UTF-8, etc. -- Dbolton ( talk) 03:46, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
The first line of the article states A proprietary format is a file format which is covered by a patent or copyright.. That is a useless definition. Actually that definition applies to for instance GPL formats as well as GPL is esentially a copyright licence.
If that is the basis for the article it might as well be removed as an article. hAl ( talk) 07:32, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
This is not what other people understand by open vs. proprietary format. See for instance: openformats.org. VasileGaburici ( talk) 10:53, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
MP3 is protected by patent holders which "are intended to give the license holder exclusive control of the technology". Ubuntu states "...by default...proprietary media formats are not configured 'out of the box'..including DVD, MP3, Quicktime, Windows Media, and more." [1] There are probably plenty more reliable sources saying the same thing. If you have any reliable sources saying otherwise please back your statement rather than removing items from the article without discussion.-- dbolton ( talk) 03:08, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm an IP attorney and was recently involved in a trial where the plaintiff tried to use compounding pharmacy case law to protect a software patent. Was the sequence of molecules used by someone not holding the patent proprietary, and is the application in use or in control of standards? The compounding pharmacist was deemed by the judge to be using a sequence without the need for a license, and the analogy didn't help the plaintiff, because the judge ruled (so far) that the patent did not protect custom development of "related code." The argument in these cases usually comes down to monopoly vs. rent seeking-- attempting to get government, regulatory or legal entities to protect a monopoly. The courts have to "split the baby" by teasing out fine differences between ownership, use and control, many of which come down to very detailed semiotics and semantics, as well as code (or formula) sequences, as we've seen in this article and discussion. Invariably, this always ends up in very tiny details of the patent itself. The tradeoff is to be "open enough" to allow wide development, alteration and use that keeps the entity vibrant with many minds contributing (Wiki anyone?) yet stay "closed enough" to maintain a perpetuity (consistent royalty stream). By definition then, this will always be a gray area, because the goal itself has to be to balance open vs. closed even for the patent holder, or they face the tradeoff of worthlessly closed from a use valence or worthlessly open from a revenue valence. Someone above made a VERY wise comment-- not only is the burden of proof on the patent holder, BUT a necessary but not sufficient condition of freedom of use is the holder not suing to protect a patent or element. The problem is that the holder always has that right, and will hold it over developers heads as a risk. If we're just playing around for our university, that's one thing, if we're getting investors to back a venture based on a mod-- you get the idea. Things seen as open or semi open can rapidly become closed, so the caution in this article is appropriate. To be very honest, in this age where developer employees get rapidly dissatisfied and move faster than we can keep track of 'em, if a Google employee goes to work over at Bing, you can imagine that a whole stadium of attorneys will be watching the scoring and harmonic analysis models that "suddenly" appear at Microsoft in image searches. Just a fictional example, don't anyone get their hackles up! Maybe the "future" will see lots more solutions like Craig's List, Wiki and Facebook where high numbers of contributors are balanced by unrelated revenue sources. Developers still will want to eat their cake and have it too-- encouraging "user feedback" but then punishing users who innovate "too" much. Phoenixthebird ( talk) 11:03, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
The opening paragraph introduces the notions of open and proprietary formats as opposites. That's clear enough. But the list of prominent proprietary formats begins with a sublist labeled "Open proprietary formats", which would appear from the first paragraph to be a contradiction in terms. I've added a paragraph attempting to reduce the impression that there is a clear black/white distinction between the two (in the spirit of Phoenixthebird's remarks above) and glossing the phrases "open proprietary" and "closed proprietary" as meaning proprietary formats which are, respectively, publicly documented and not publicly documented. If anyone has a better handle on what was meant by those phrases on the part of those who introduced (or retained) the phrases, feel free to correct the gloss. C.M.Sperberg-McQueen ( talk) 22:20, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
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The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information. |
This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
This article is rated Stub-class on Wikipedia's
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|
The European Union says that patents related to an open standard must be made royalty-free, not just permitted for use within the standard.
Though the OOXML specification is publicly available, patents make improving it difficult, since Microsoft only permits the patents relevant to the specification to be used within the specification's definition. This means that it's hard for competitors to embrace, extend, and extinguish the patent but it also means that only Microsoft can improve the specification. Since modification of the specification is severely limited, it is not open by any definition of the word; at most it's on par with freeware software.
The above follows open source software, which has different prerequisites for openness than open standards, but OOXML is still a proprietary format. Though it has promised not to, Microsoft has made no legal assurance that it won't sue implementers for patent infringement. SteveSims ( talk) 02:41, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
If I understand correctly, not all plain text encodings are open (i.e. previous extensions to ASCII before UTF-8). This is probably why it was listed as "ASCII -- plain text" rather than "Plain text -- ASCII, UTF-8, etc. -- Dbolton ( talk) 03:46, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
The first line of the article states A proprietary format is a file format which is covered by a patent or copyright.. That is a useless definition. Actually that definition applies to for instance GPL formats as well as GPL is esentially a copyright licence.
If that is the basis for the article it might as well be removed as an article. hAl ( talk) 07:32, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
This is not what other people understand by open vs. proprietary format. See for instance: openformats.org. VasileGaburici ( talk) 10:53, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
MP3 is protected by patent holders which "are intended to give the license holder exclusive control of the technology". Ubuntu states "...by default...proprietary media formats are not configured 'out of the box'..including DVD, MP3, Quicktime, Windows Media, and more." [1] There are probably plenty more reliable sources saying the same thing. If you have any reliable sources saying otherwise please back your statement rather than removing items from the article without discussion.-- dbolton ( talk) 03:08, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm an IP attorney and was recently involved in a trial where the plaintiff tried to use compounding pharmacy case law to protect a software patent. Was the sequence of molecules used by someone not holding the patent proprietary, and is the application in use or in control of standards? The compounding pharmacist was deemed by the judge to be using a sequence without the need for a license, and the analogy didn't help the plaintiff, because the judge ruled (so far) that the patent did not protect custom development of "related code." The argument in these cases usually comes down to monopoly vs. rent seeking-- attempting to get government, regulatory or legal entities to protect a monopoly. The courts have to "split the baby" by teasing out fine differences between ownership, use and control, many of which come down to very detailed semiotics and semantics, as well as code (or formula) sequences, as we've seen in this article and discussion. Invariably, this always ends up in very tiny details of the patent itself. The tradeoff is to be "open enough" to allow wide development, alteration and use that keeps the entity vibrant with many minds contributing (Wiki anyone?) yet stay "closed enough" to maintain a perpetuity (consistent royalty stream). By definition then, this will always be a gray area, because the goal itself has to be to balance open vs. closed even for the patent holder, or they face the tradeoff of worthlessly closed from a use valence or worthlessly open from a revenue valence. Someone above made a VERY wise comment-- not only is the burden of proof on the patent holder, BUT a necessary but not sufficient condition of freedom of use is the holder not suing to protect a patent or element. The problem is that the holder always has that right, and will hold it over developers heads as a risk. If we're just playing around for our university, that's one thing, if we're getting investors to back a venture based on a mod-- you get the idea. Things seen as open or semi open can rapidly become closed, so the caution in this article is appropriate. To be very honest, in this age where developer employees get rapidly dissatisfied and move faster than we can keep track of 'em, if a Google employee goes to work over at Bing, you can imagine that a whole stadium of attorneys will be watching the scoring and harmonic analysis models that "suddenly" appear at Microsoft in image searches. Just a fictional example, don't anyone get their hackles up! Maybe the "future" will see lots more solutions like Craig's List, Wiki and Facebook where high numbers of contributors are balanced by unrelated revenue sources. Developers still will want to eat their cake and have it too-- encouraging "user feedback" but then punishing users who innovate "too" much. Phoenixthebird ( talk) 11:03, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
The opening paragraph introduces the notions of open and proprietary formats as opposites. That's clear enough. But the list of prominent proprietary formats begins with a sublist labeled "Open proprietary formats", which would appear from the first paragraph to be a contradiction in terms. I've added a paragraph attempting to reduce the impression that there is a clear black/white distinction between the two (in the spirit of Phoenixthebird's remarks above) and glossing the phrases "open proprietary" and "closed proprietary" as meaning proprietary formats which are, respectively, publicly documented and not publicly documented. If anyone has a better handle on what was meant by those phrases on the part of those who introduced (or retained) the phrases, feel free to correct the gloss. C.M.Sperberg-McQueen ( talk) 22:20, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to one external link on
Proprietary format. Please take a moment to review
my edit. If necessary, add {{
cbignore}}
after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{
nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}}
to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 18 January 2022).
Cheers.— cyberbot II Talk to my owner:Online 05:01, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
Mustafa Kamal Kakar District Secretary PNAP Loralai, Young Politician Nationalist Progressive 2401:BA80:AC03:6CD8:3:2:B4C0:5C26 ( talk) 09:35, 2 March 2024 (UTC)