European Commission to investigate OOXML and Office 2007 interoperability http://noooxml.wikidot.com/forum/t-35316/european-commission-to-investigate-ooxml-and-office-2007-int Posts in the discussion thread "European Commission to investigate OOXML and Office 2007 interoperability" - The European Commission has started new investigations on whether Microsoft is abusing its dominant position on the Office market. The Commission will try to find out if Microsoft OOXML file format as implemented in Office 2007 is sufficiently interoperable with competitors' products. Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:38:49 +0000 http://noooxml.wikidot.com/forum/t-35316#post-91318 Re: European Commission to investigate OOXML and Office 2007 interoperability http://noooxml.wikidot.com/forum/t-35316/european-commission-to-investigate-ooxml-and-office-2007-int#post-91318 Mon, 14 Jan 2008 18:08:57 +0000 podmokle 3547 OMG!

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-35108/iso-warned-about-possible-patent-ambush-on-ooxml

]]> http://noooxml.wikidot.com/forum/t-35316#post-91313 Re: European Commission to investigate OOXML and Office 2007 interoperability http://noooxml.wikidot.com/forum/t-35316/european-commission-to-investigate-ooxml-and-office-2007-int#post-91313 Mon, 14 Jan 2008 18:02:12 +0000 podmokle 3547 The key is patent licensing here. The company which was called by N. Kroes "super-dominant" filed numerous software patents for OOXML which attempt to distort competition.

Microsoft's Matusow was very confident there are no strings attached:
http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonmatusow/archive/2008/01/10/there-are-no-intellectual-property-rights-issues-with-open-xml.aspx

However, I don't trust the OSP to be applicable throughout Europe and grant meaningful rights. Just read this:

These IPR commitments go beyond the requirements for ISO/IEC adoption of a standard, and ISO/IEC and Ecma have stated specifically that there are no IPR issues with Open XML.

ISO/IEC permit rand licensing which is totally unacceptable for an ubiquitous standard. It is no big deal to comply with their requirements. As of "there are no IPR issues" it needs a single patent from a third party to produce a real mess.

]]> http://noooxml.wikidot.com/forum/t-35316#post-91273 European Commission to investigate OOXML and Office 2007 interoperability http://noooxml.wikidot.com/forum/t-35316/european-commission-to-investigate-ooxml-and-office-2007-int#post-91273 Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:04:14 +0000 zoobab 2946 The European Commission DG Antitrust has started new investigations on whether Microsoft is abusing its dominant position on the Office market.

Here is what their today's press release "Antitrust: Commission initiates formal investigations against Microsoft in two cases of suspected abuse of dominant market position" is saying about OOXML:

The Commission's examination will therefore focus on all these areas, including the question whether Microsoft's new file format Office Open XML, as implemented in Office, is sufficiently interoperable with competitors' products.

Let's hope the Commission will be quicker to act then the previous case that lasted 10 years and was trumped by Microsoft's software patents.

Maybe Nellie Kroes could send a letter to Microsoft asking whether or not Office 2007 is compliant with ECMA-376, so that an AutoSpaceLikeWord95 can defeat the question of "sufficient interoperability".

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