If it wasn’t bad enough that Microsoft had a patent granted on Apple’s wheel thingy on the iPod after the iPod was on the market now a company in the US is claiming to have patents that cover XML for the transfer of “data in neutral forms”.

The ray of light is that there is a good chance that the patent could be ruled unenforceable in a court of law, as the report points out:

Patent lawyer Bruce Sunstein, a co-founder of Boston-based Bromberg & Sunstein, viewed Scientigo’s patents and concluded that the company will have difficulty in enforcing claims over XML.

Sunstein noted that XML is derived from SGML, which dates back to the 1980s. SGML, in turn, is based on computing concepts from the 1960s. If Scientigo’s claims were ever litigated, the company would have to address all the prior work on data formats.

Update: Groklaw now has a report on these patent claims.