Bill Gates tries to Patent RSS

First, it's not Bill Gates, it's eight MS employees.

Niall Kennedy Analyzes The Microsoft RSS Patent Applications

And there's some discussion that this is a defensive patent.

I think Bill Gates owns 22.3% or so of Microsoft... so I guess you could say that it's not really Eight Employees.. it's 6 Employees and 2 Bill Gates? :)

I agree it's a Defensive Patent.. but in my experience with Microsoft.. nothing is really 'Defensive'.

apple and google also have rss-related patent filings. i agree with the line of thought that it is primarily defensive; msft employee don dodge recently elaborated on this. i think with the exception of apple the big players realize the need to find a way to monetize open licensing, MSFT seems to be exploring that in the RSS space via their SSE initiative.

Why not read all about it from the true inventor of RSS.

There's no such thing as a defensive patent. If the idea was obvious, it shouldn't be patentable. If you were first to the table with something then there's no need to defend yourself with a patent. Either you have a cut and dry history of developing the technology before anybody else patented it, or their patent gets denied because of prior art.

I hope the application gets denied. Using XML for its intended purpose is not innovation. There's entirely too much patent abuse happening by big tech companies.

No, it isn't to screw everyone using it. It's to protect himself for something coming up. Why develop a future technology when you can't actually own it's core ingredients? All you're doing in the long run is blowing money marketing for your competitors who will eventually come out with something better.