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Microsoft's Open Format Rejected
by Winter Casey
Microsoft may sound positive in its quest to receive approval for its open-document software format from the International Standards Organization, but news from the standards body does not appear so promising.
The ISO said in a statement Tuesday that Microsoft's Open XML standard "has not achieved the required number of votes for approval." The ISO's five-month ballot process ended Sept. 2.
According to the standards body, Open XML needed to receive at least two-thirds of the votes cast by participating national bodies, and no more than 25 percent of the total votes could be negative. Microsoft missed those thresholds when 26 percent of the participants voted against the standard and only 53 percent supported it, according to the ISO.
A meeting is planned for February in Geneva "to review and seek consensus on possible modifications to the document in light of the comments received along with the votes," the ISO reported.
If the discussions produce modifications that prompt national bodies to withdraw their negative votes and the vote thresholds then are met, ISO said, "the standard may proceed to publication. Otherwise, the proposal will have failed and this fast-track procedure will be terminated."
Microsoft likely will agree to make changes necessary to get ISO approval, said Morgan Reed, executive director of the Association for Competitive Technology, of which Microsoft is a member. Microsoft said some ISO members that voted no "stated that they will support Open XML after their comments are addressed during the final phase of the process."
Mike Wendy, a spokesman for the Computing Technology Industry Association, said during the next stage of the approval process, comments from ISO members will be reconciled "and the standard made stronger" for acceptance by the ISO. This "ballot resolution process allows standards bodies to change votes after the proposed standard has been reconciled with the outstanding technical comments," Wendy added.
In light of the ballot outcome, Microsoft is not expected to learn if it will receive final approval for its format until March.
Last year, the standards body Ecma International approved Microsoft Office Open XML. Currently, the only ISO-approved open-file format is the OpenDocument Format, or ODF, which is promoted by the ODF Alliance. The group's members include Microsoft competitors such as IBM and Sun Microsystems.
Chris Hankin of Sun Microsystems said his company prefers one standard and cares most about openness and interoperability. "We think ODF does a great job on both these points," he said. "Open XML could strive to achieve the same."
Attention to the standards has increased as more organizations around the world express interest in achieving document-processing interoperability and using open formats to create digital archives. Some governments have considered mandating preferences for open standards.
Reed said governments should not make decisions based on ISO standards but on the goals they are seeking to achieve. In the area of file formats, having governments create preferences based on ISO standards is not the best way to advance technological innovation, he added.
Marino Marcich, managing director of the ODF Alliance, said the ISO ballot results are not surprising given the large amount of comments from national standards bodies that highlighted the dependencies of Open XML on other Microsoft proprietary formats and the many undocumented features of Open XML that make it impossible to implement the standard with other companies' products.
After the Sept. 2 ballot, "governments are going to think twice before using Open XML," Marcich predicted.
Despite this week's setback, Microsoft continued to voice confidence that its format will gain the ISO's approval in early 2008. "This preliminary vote is a milestone for the widespread adoption of the Open XML formats around the world for the benefit of millions of customers," Tom Robertson, Microsoft's general manager for interoperability and standards, said in a statement.
Bush Administration Plans Trade Meetings
President Bush will meet with Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates at the White House on Sept. 17 to discuss enhancing cooperation on trade and counterterrorism, among other issues, the White House said Friday. The leaders also plan to discuss trans-Atlantic relations, energy security and climate change.
U.S. Trade Representatives Susan Schwab, meanwhile, is attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Sydney, Australia, this week to discuss efforts to open trade and investment flows.
Schwab said members of APEC account for 46 percent of global trade. The United States exported $645 billion in goods to APEC economies in 2006, according to the USTR.
In other trade news, the Senate Finance Committee will consider the proposed U.S.-Peru free-trade agreement on Tuesday. In a statement, Schwab said the agreement will create economic opportunities for manufacturers.
A USTR fact sheet released in June said the agreement would provide for "improved standards for the protection and enforcement of a broad range of intellectual property rights, which are consistent, both with U.S. standards of protection and enforcement and with emerging international standards."
Some of the benefits cited by USTR include: "state-of-the-art protections for digital products such as U.S. software, music, text and video; stronger protection for U.S. patents, trademarks and test data, including an electronic system for the registration and maintenance of trademarks; and further deterrence of piracy and counterfeiting of criminalizing end-user piracy."
The proposed agreement also contains a provision on e-commerce that "commits both parties to nondiscriminatory treatment of digital products." The USTR said the countries would agree not to impose customs duties on digital products and to cooperate in numerous policy areas related to e-commerce. The agreement additionally calls for "a system to resolve disputes about trademarks used in Internet domain names" and addresses other trademark and copyright issues.
"Under the agreement, copyright owners maintain rights over temporary copies of their works on computers, establishing that only authors, composers and other copyright owners have the right to make their work available online," the USTR added.
U.S., Britain Forge Patent Deal
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and Britain's Intellectual Property Office plan to work together to improve the patent-approval process, PTO announced Tuesday.
The offices plan to participate in a pilot "Patent Prosecution Highway" to "allow applicants in both countries to obtain corresponding patents faster and more efficiently." The project "will permit each office to benefit from work previously done by the other office, in turn reducing examination workload and improving patent quality," PTO said.
"Patent offices worldwide must increase the depth and effectiveness of their cooperation," PTO Director Jon Dudas said in a statement. "Our collective goal is to reduce duplication of work, speed up processing and improve quality."
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