The US patent office has granted a Microsoft patent application, 7,571,169, which "... is directed at providing a word-processing document in a native XML file format that may be understood by an application that understands XML, or to enable another application or service to create a rich document in XML so that the word-processing application can open it as if it was one of its own documents. " The patent also specifies that the document can contain formatting information such as line, paragraph and page breaks, font styles and sizes, and other standard components of text documents. Within the patent, Microsoft has included a list of over a hundred references to books, articles, patents and other software that bear on XML usage in word processing.