Submitted by: kirkland on Friday December 22nd, 2006 at 04:17 PM EST

Microsoft has filed for two patents covering technology used to organize and read syndicated Web feeds, such as those delivered via the widely used Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, family of formats.

The pair of applications were made public by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for what appears to be the first time on Thursday, following the expiration of a requisite 18-month window in which applications are generally kept secret.

Redmond actually filed for the patents on June 21, 2005. That date, incidentally, is just three days prior to the company's formal announcement that it planned to build support for RSS into the next version of its Internet Explorer browser and into its planned Windows Vista operating system--then referred to as Longhorn.

This is not the first time a company has attempted to patent a means of Web syndication. Last year, an application surfaced for a patent sought by Google that would cover delivery of advertisements via syndicated news feeds.

» Full story @ CNet