Post #151,298
4/15/04 7:57:09 PM
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Not so fast, Microsoft.
The Reg: [link|http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/15/fat_patent_review/|Patent Office asked to review Microsoft FAT patent.] Microsoft's patent for the FAT file system - the basis for the company's first salvo in its licensing offensive - is to be reviewed by the US Patent Office, at the request of a free software group.
Microsoft introduced its first ever intellectual property licensing program in December, having hired the senior IBM executive responsible for building Big Blue's patent revenue stream from zero in 1985 into what's now a billion dollar business, Marshall Phelps. Redmond calls it "liberalization", and set the royalty payments relatively low for its intended customers, such as camera manufacturers who use the FAT file system for removable storage. But any royalty fee poses an insurmountable obstacle for free software developers, the attorney behind the request told us today. o o o ... Microsoft's FAT patent (5,579, 517) is invalid because of three prior art patents, filed by IBM and Xerox in 1988, 1989 and 1990. Microsoft was not granted '517 until 1996.
Alex
Sacred cows make the best hamburger. --Mark Twain
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Post #151,307
4/15/04 9:12:28 PM
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Re: Not so fast, Microsoft.
Read that item in Groklaw. Seems there is a tactic being played out re FAT.
There are several patents around FAT & the tactic seems to be to go for the simplest core patent in the expectation that will be a win. Then, the assumption is that several supporting patents will topple by default.
I don't recall the groklaw article mentioning that other companies had predated patents in the same area.
The other question for me is who invented FAT?, Was it part of SOS (the Seattle OS that Gates bought to deliver DOS to IBM). Did IBM spec FAT as part of their requirements for a PC OS? Does FAT in any way infinge on the CP/M file format ?
Doug Marker
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Post #151,325
4/15/04 10:09:16 PM
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Here is Wikipedia link.
[link|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#Versions_and_history|Link]. FAT as it is known today made its debut in 1980 with the first version of QDOS, the ancestor of Microsoft's PC-DOS and MS-DOS. o o o FAT licensing
Although technical details of the FAT file system derive from CP/M and have been widely known and widely disseminated in the PC community for many years, and although the file system itself is widely considered to be obsolete, it should be noted that in 2003 Microsoft made a point of asserting intellectual property claims to the system. Citing patents, Microsoft claimed that licensing fees are required for its use in such applications as removable solid state media, and consumer devices using such media.
This claim by Microsoft is controversial, for a number of reasons. Microsoft itself has admitted that it developed its first FAT file system in 1976, so no patents could apply to an implementation of the original version. Copyright law could not prevent a re-implementation of FAT either.
Microsoft has cited 4 patents, dating from 1995 on, for FAT. All of these patents relate to storing both long and short filenames in a single file system. A Slashdot discussion on December 4, 2003, analyzed these patents and participants (particularly Svartalf) reported the following:
* Patent 5,579,517 - Common name space for long and short filenames. Filed for on April 24, 1995. This appears to only impact someone using a Common Name Space for long and short filenames. This is the scheme Microsoft deployed for "Chicago" (the codename of Windows 95 while in development). This patent is likely to be invalidated (if challenged) by Microsoft's prior art release of Chicago to the world in December 1993.
* Patent 5,745,902 - Method and system for accessing a file using file names having different file name formats. Filed for on July 6, 1992. This patents allowing renaming of just the name and preserving the extension for the purposes of keeping track of the filetype. It is unclear that other implementors would need to implement this patent to implement a FAT system.
* Patent 5,758,352 - Common name space for long and short filenames. Filed on September 5, 1996. This is extremely similar to the 5,579,517 Patent; see those comments.
* Patent 6,286,013 - Method and system for providing a common name space for long and short file names in an operating system. Filed on January 28, 1997. This is a detailed description of how Windows 95/98/Me handles long filenames on an x86-32 platform. It is unclear this patent would apply to anything other than an exact clone of Windows 95/98/Me. This patent is likely to be invalidated (if challenged) by Microsoft's prior art release of Windows 95, two years before the filing date,
In addition, there also seems to be prior art for at least the first, third, and fourth patents in the Rock Ridge Interchange Protocol standard for UNIX, which was an IEEE draft specification on at least July 13th, 1993. This protocol defined a method to support long and short names on the same media (as well as additional information) to support Unix systems.
And of course, there is the simple question if this is really an innovative idea at all. Patents are supposed to be granted for new ideas; the notion of not removing short names, but adding long name information as well, is an option that is immediately obvious to any practitioner in the field.
In short, many have concluded that these patents only cover implementations that include support for long filenames, so it likely that removable solid state media and consumer devices only using short names would be unaffected. Also, there is good reason to believe the patents would be found invalid or unnecessary if challenged. In particular, many or all such patents are believed by many to be invalid because of previous public release, prior art, or because the technique would be obvious to a practitioner.
Alex
Sacred cows make the best hamburger. --Mark Twain
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