Quote - Microsoft Word is perhaps one of the most widely used productivity apps on the planet and has established some document file formats that are generally pretty well supported in other apps... ...e.g. Open Office can open .doc format etc.

OOo is able to open a .doc file because the fine folks at OpenOffice did the work of making it open... with zero help from Microsoft.

Therein lies my point. If The Poser team wants Poser to use the Genesis figure, then let them sweat out the details and make it work. 

Quote - However, even at their scale and with the product coverage that MS Office has, Microsoft have still realised there is a need for them to provide plenty of extensibility and interoperability support; e.g. Word can save as Rich Text Format or as PDF, and as a variety of other, more open, or just alternative, formats.

Not entirely correct. 

PDF is an add-on you have to get separately, and Microsoft pays Adobe license fees for the privilege. RTF is an ancient and crippled format. Microsoft also fought, tooth and nail, a universal (ODF) document format, so your argument of Microsoft trying to help others out is, well, not correct at all.

Quote - Plus the SDK, interop classes and developer support for MS Office...

Err, you may want to read this. And this. And this. Microsoft isn't exactly a choir of angels when it comes to documenting APIs and file formats, so they may not be your best example... ;)