My hope was that I could actually imbed custom tags into the word doc itself to designate data entry controls so that if we later have to scrape the word document again due to some changes in text, then the data entry controls can also be generated from the custom tags. So I don’t need Word to support the tags, but if it’s going to remove the tags, then it’s a big problem and defeats the purpose. So if I understand correctly, what I want to do is no longer possible because my business analysts(the people editing the word doc that defines the layout of the form) might have the “crippled” version of word?

I don’t know. More to the point, I don’t know if MS is going to do away with Content Controls in Word 2007. There’s precious little info about the whole thing online…

You can store a custom XML file inside of the DOCX package, then insert a Content Control into the Word doc that points at an element inside of the custom XML file.

Is this impacted by the patent? Or it only when custom XML is stored along with the OOXML (like in your example above)?

http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions/09-1504.pdf

In Google search of “Microsoft injunction” you get

Microsoft Injunction

Aug 11, 2009 … Case 6:07-cv-00113-LEDDocument 413Filed 08/11/2009Page 1 of 2IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS TYLER …
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/9698189/Microsoft-Injunction – Cached

Which leads you to :

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/9698189/Microsoft-Injunction

I think it’s part of a different case. At least as of five minutes ago, the injunction was not vacated.

From what I’ve read, OpenOffice.org DOES, indeed, use similar technology, as do several other companies. i4i has fired a shot across the bow of several of them. Whether i4i has the grace and common sense to grant OO a free, permanent license remains to be seen. I consider it something of a litmus test.

1) Is this the same case in which an injunction was issued, forbidding all sales of Word 2007 going forward (since vacated by the Courts), or was that part of a different patent case? Seems Microsoft should have read the handwriting on the wall as of that moment, eh?

2) I presume that OpenOffice.org does not use the type of XML meta-data which Microsoft uses. So are we who use OpenOffice in the clear on this point?

3) Chalk up another Microsoft boondoggle, making their products so bloated (er, feature-rich) and Byzantine as to invite this kind of patent-sniping. While I don’t usually advocate for businesses to develop their own in-house solutions, it appears that this type of programming might have best been left to third-party or in-house programmers, thus saving Microsoft from all of this litigation in the first place. But that is not the Microsoft way now, is it? Never has been, in my twenty or more years of using Microsoft products, going back to Office 95 in the Windows 95 OS.