Some protocol notes from a presentation of Dr. Weisgerber (DIN) - German slides and notes.
For example Microsoft: Microsoft supports a file format .doc respective .ppt (Powerpoint). Both formats are not public. That means for enterprises lack of investment certainty. e.g: Microsoft went bankrupt what would happen. Then the data may go unreadable anymore years later, because no program updates are made available for the underlying operation system etc.. That is why public administration and libraries in particular pressure for publication of the formats. This created that much pressure that Microsoft published an XML-Specification.
What the responsible DIN person does not mention is that there is already an universal ISO standard for the same purpose, based on XML that OOXML aims to torpedo. And Microsoft already published its specification via ECMA. So there is no gain for the general public when the ECMA standard would get ISO stamped. An international standard is for all parties with global relevance. Instead of getting Microsoft to comply with the existing international standard the ISO system makes it easy to get an additional standard owned by a single party. It sets a dangerous precedence. You dont like the universally agreed standard? Develop your own and pay ISO members to get it, too. The German committee is stuffed with Microsoft partners. In reality the existence of an international open standard and its ongoing adoption made Microsoft to standardize its semi-open alternative. The alternative is ISO 26300:2006, not PPT and DOC. Microsoft does not want to bear the investment to implement the standard and sources out the little catch-up game to its competitors once again.
The longterm preservation objective is indeed worth investigation. Patent protection lasts 20 years. So later implementers wont be restricted by these industrial privilege rights.