Comparison of OpenDocument and Microsoft Office Open XML licensing

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This article compares the licensing terms for the OASIS OpenDocument standard and Ecma Office Open XML standard draft, which both market themselves as open, XML-based document file formats for saving and exchanging editable office documents such as text documents (including memos, reports, and books), spreadsheets, charts, and presentations.

[edit] OpenDocument

OpenDocument is royalty-free. It can be used without charge by anyone.^[1]

An irrevocable intellectual property covenant has been made by Sun Microsystems regarding its intellectual property rights (IPR), subject solely to reciprocity requirements, that it will not seek to enforce any of its enforceable U.S. or foreign patents against any implementation of OpenDocument. This statement is not an assurance that (...) an OpenDocument Implementation would not infringe patents or other intellectual property rights of any third party.^[2]

[edit] Office Open XML

Ecma Standards and Technical Reports are made available to all interested persons or organizations, free of charge and copyright.^[3]

Microsoft has released an covenant not to sue stating that Microsoft irrevocably covenants that it will not seek to enforce any of its patent claims necessary to conform to the technical specifications for the Microsoft Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas (...) against those conforming parts of software products.. This statement is not an assurance (...) that such an implementation would not infringe patents or other intellectual property rights of any third party. (...) Microsoft will make the covenant above available for the Ecma International Standard on Office Open XML file formats.^[4] That stament is made good on the Microsoft Open Specification Promise page that was updated shortly after the proposed Ecma OOXML final draft ^[5] where the covenant is reaffirmed for that Ecma current proposed final draft.

The covenant leaves everyone able to use Microsoft intellectual property rights (IPR) without the need to license as long as they implement the format (Microsoft Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas) in accordance to the format specifications and as long as they do not sue Microsoft for patent claims over the format. Further statements by Microsoft to clarify this covenant not to sue are to be found on the blog of Microsoft program manager for the XML formats Brian Jones:

• Notice that it currently says that it applies to the Office 2003 schemas. That's because we haven't submitted the Office 12 schemas yet. We'll of course update this to cover the 12 schemas as soon as we get those posted.
• You don’t need to sign anything or even reference anything. You are free to use our formats as much as you want and you don’t need to make any mention or reference to Microsoft. You can implement these formats so that you can both read and write the formats with your technology, code, solution, etc. In other words we will not sue people for using the formats even if it is competitive software.
• We eliminated the license to patents language and are instead providing an irrevocable commitment to not sue anyone based on the patents we have in the formats^[6]

To lessen lasting concerns even more Microsoft have even had a legal firm review the covenant not to sue and validate the claims made by Microsoft. ^{[7] [8]}

[edit] References

1. ^ OASIS foundation. FAQ. OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC. OASIS foundation. FAQ 15
2. ^ Sun Microsystems, Inc.. Sun OpenDocument Patent Statement. OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC. OASIS foundation.
3. ^ Ecma International. Ecma formal publications. Ecma International Web site. Ecma International.
4. ^ Microsoft Covenant Regarding Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas. Office XML Reference Schemas Licensing.
5. ^ Microsoft Open Specification Promise. Microsoft (2006-10-23). Retrieved on 2006-11-06.
6. ^ New approach to licensing with the Office XML formats. Brian Jones: Open XML Formats (weblog). Brian Jones (Microsoft XML formats program manager). Retrieved on 22-11-2005.
7. ^ No license needed to use the Office Open XML formats. Brian Jones: Open XML Formats (weblog). Brian Jones (Microsoft XML formats program manager). Retrieved on 04-08-2006.
8. ^ Baker & McKenzie / London Information Technology Practice. Standardisation and Licensing of Microsoft's Office Open XML Reference Schema. Baker & McKenzie. Retrieved on June 2006.