Open XML Paper Specification - Licensing

Licensing

To encourage wide use of the format, Microsoft has released XPS under a royalty-free patent license called the Community Promise for XPS, allowing users to create implementations of the specification that read, write and render XPS files as long as they include a notice within the source that technologies implemented may be encumbered by patents held by Microsoft. Microsoft also requires that organizations "engaged in the business of developing (i) scanners that output XPS Documents; (ii) printers that consume XPS Documents to produce hard-copy output; or (iii) print driver or raster image software products or components thereof that convert XPS Documents for the purpose of producing hard-copy output, will not sue Microsoft or any of its licensees under the XML Paper Specification or customers for infringement of any XML Paper Specification Derived Patents (as defined below) on account of any manufacture, use, sale, offer for sale, importation or other disposition or promotion of any XML Paper Specification implementations." The specification itself is released under a royalty-free copyright license, allowing its free distribution.

In 2011-09-13, Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc. announced it has licensed its XPS-to-PCL 6 and XPS-to-PostScript vector conversion filters to Microsoft Corp. for use in the next version of Windows.