Finally, someone has gone through Microsot's RSS-related application and had a go at figuring out what is being claimed. According to Niall Kennedy, not much -- but then, most patents add "not much" to existing methods, and that's particulalry true in software.
It's worth a quick scan just to remove the notion that Microsoft "is attempting to patent RSS". It isn't. However, that will probably become the common currency in the echo-chamber of the web, where "the stupidity of crowds" meme generally operates.
There are plenty of things wrong with the US patent system, and there are plenty of things wrong with software patents: some of us think they shouldn't be alowed, and we've given Richard Stallman plenty of space to argue that case in print. There are, goodness knows, plenty of things wrong with Microsoft. However, distorting the facts is not an honest way to attack either of them.
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