Microsoft Withdraws From Standards Group

United Nations Center for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business

Microsoft deemed its participation in the U.N. standards organization to be redundant with the company's efforts with the International Organization for Standardization, a company spokesman said. "From our reviews, we found we were doing the same standards work in both groups," he added.

The U.N. standards organization is a sponsor of business-to-business standards such as EDI and E-Business XML (ebXML). In the end, Microsoft's accelerated push to increase the number of patents it holds won out over any desire to participate in the standards organization.

Microsoft said Monday it plans to file more than 3,000 patents in fiscal 2005, an increase over the more than 2,000 patents it plans to file this year. Though the company ranks about 30th among patent holders in the United States, Microsoft intends to move into the top 10.