intellectual-property software patents
Do these two Microsoft Excel patents prevent anyone from shipping similar features?
<p>Considering these two patents describing two features:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US7266763B2/en" rel="nofollow noreferrer">User defined spreadsheet functions</a></li>
<li><a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US8549392/en" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Customizable spreadsheet table styles</a></li>
</ul>
<p>If anyone were to build some spreadsheet software, what would these entail in terms of restrictions if they would want to develop the same features?
Is there a difference between commercial software and open source/free in that case?</p>

<p>If you want to implement this or a similar feature, you'd look up the patents, and either get a license (unlikely that Microsoft would give you a license), or figure out how to implement the feature without violating the patent.</p>
<p>An example how a company I worked for worked around a patent: In order to compress data. in the best possible way, the idea was to try eight different methods to compress the data and pick the best compressed data. There was a patent for that (even though to me, this was quite obvious). Workaround: The software tried eight different methods and reported a number from 1 to 8 indicating which method gave the best result (unlike the patent, which actually <em>gave</em> the best result). Then the data was compressed once using the best method. No patent violation.</p>
<p>You'd probably want a patent lawyer to check if your idea how to implement the feature violates the patent or not, and how to get around it. It takes a specific mindset that you and I don't have. And even good lawyers who are not patent lawyers might not be able to help you there.</p>
<p>Commercial vs. open source/free software makes no difference, except that Microsoft might not bother suing you if there is no money to be made. Unless the intent is to prevent you from implementing the feature, in which case the would sue companies without money as well.</p>
