The XML spec says: "XML was developed by an XML Working Group (originally known as the SGML Editorial Review Board) formed under the auspices of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1996". I was surprised to find out that patent 5787449 was filed on June 2, 1994. The patent sounds alot like a description of XML to me. Seems like i4i could go after alot of companies that make tools that display xml documents in formats other than plain text.