The USPTO operates very similarly to the SA roadworthy test. Patents are rarely rejected outright. Their claims are examined and the examiner returns a report of all the things which need to be fixed.
All the claims of MS Wordprocessing-XML patent were rejected by the US examiner back in June. Of the 31 claims, 29 were plain rejected and the remaing 2 objected to.
MS cancelled all the existing claims (1 – 31) submitted a set of amended claims (32 – 41). You might be curious to know that the USPTO examiner has just finished examining the new claims and rejected the whole lot of them! The primary basis for the rejection of the new claims is prior art from Abiword.
You can follow all the documented correspendence between MS and the USPTO by making use of the portal:
http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/pair
You must select “Publication Number” and enter “US 2004-0210818 A1″. The system is VERY fussy so be exact or you get nowhere.
It seems that the USPTO examiner really has something against this patent application. Of course, the version that is already granted in our office is the original 31 claims. It seems that the EPO (European) application has not yet gone for examination. It looks like they will probably wait until they finally get a “roadworthy” from the USPTO before amending the claims accordingly and request examination in Europe. Seems like they are not getting an easy ride.
(Contributed by Bob Joliffe)
