Comments on: Microsoft FAT patent falls flat

Open-source advocates notch a victory, since the technology is used by Linux. Now Redmond has 90 days to respond.

Getting at least one of them rescinded is good news...

Does anyone know which patents these are?

Found them

http://patents.oncloud8.com/?pns=US5579517;US5745902;US5758352;US6286013

More details on the FAT File System and the Patent License can be found on Microsoft's webpage: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/ip/tech/fat.asp

Microsoft Oxygen OS

Soon Microsoft will come up with the next generation OS that breathes on oxygen. In preparation for that Microsoft will be filling for a patent for the breathing OS. Robot makers to include humans will have to pay a $20 per license fee for each lung that they possess.

Cheif Architec Bill Gate$

[phoobar]

got that right

he'd charge us all to breathe if he could get away with it. He's a madman comparable to some of worst tyrannical dictators in world histroy.

[Tex Murphy PI]

Isn't it a little too late to file the patent?

FAT has been around for DECADES, and is pretty much the lingua franca format for cross-platform technologies used on PCs, Flash Cards, etc. etc. Hell, it's so common, even Macs support it!

To file a patent on such a widely used file format now is just plain greedy. Nobody files a patent for the fun of it (at least not corporations), and the fact that MS is selling out licensing fees for it makes it obvious that this is the main thrust of the filing.

Isn't there a time-limit to filing for a patent? After all, what is to prevent a drug company from releasing a wonder-drug, getting everyone to produce a generic equivalent to it, and then filing a patent so that they can sue for royalties for every pill sold to date?

[volterwd]

That would be stupid

you get a patent so you can charge 1000 dollars for a 1$ drug... you wouldnt make that much off liscencing fees

[unknown unknown]

Reply

The patent in question is from 1996.

[duncangibb]

Samba doesn't use FAT

As I commented last time you reported on this patent, Samba shares Unix/Linux filesystems and printers with Windows clients using SMB.

A /few/ Linux installations use FAT to read Windows/DOS floppy disks, Windows hard disk partitions, and directly-read memory cards, but this does not involve Samba.

Getting your facts wrong once is poor journalism. Getting your facts wrong again when someone has pointed it out to you is inexcusable.