Patent 7617447 was granted and assigned to Microsoft on November, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Portions of an Extensible Markup Language document, such as individual paragraphs or groups of paragraphs or fragments of text, are provided self-describing properties such as styles, fonts, list types, and the like. If such a portion of a document is subsequently copied or moved to a second document or to a different location in the first document, the self-describing properties provided for the portion travel with the portion to the second document or to the different location in the first document.