Microsoft Corp. Monday said it will offer its Word, Excel and PowerPoint document formats as open standards, a move that could spark a war with technology rivals over standard document formats. Microsoft said it would submit its Office Open XML (Extensible Markup Language) document format technology to the International Standards Organization to be adopted as an international standard in time for the launch of the next version of its Office software suite, code-named Office 12.

The development comes as a group of technology rivals led by IBM Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. are mobilizing a global effort to push the OASIS consortium's Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) as a global standard format for these kinds of documents. The effort was spurred in part by a highly publicized proposal in Massachusetts requiring compliance with OpenDocument for government documents, which would mean the phasing out of Microsoft Office and its proprietary format.

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