If you've added headlines from a news site to My Yahoo, or subscribe to blogs on a site like Bloglines, you've used RSS, a technology that's growing increasingly popular for distributing headlines and articles from blogs, news websites, and more. But now, two recently published patent applications reveal, Microsoft (MSFT) is claiming it invented RSS.
Microsoft executive Don Dodge, while not involved in the patent applications, says he suspects the filings were made to defend the company against "patent trolls". (The filings were made shortly before Microsoft announced plans to build RSS technology into its upcoming Vista operating system.) Still, if granted, the patents would give Microsoft a legal cudgel to wield against other companies using RSS.
That's a long shot, however: "Prior art," the patent-law term for earlier examples of the technology in use, should be easy to show, since RSS has been around for years. The most likely outcome will be that Microsoft's patent is rejected - and no one else will be able to patent RSS, either, keeping the technology free for everyone to use.
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