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Microsoft FAT Patent Upheld
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Jan 11, 2006 03:34 AM
from the fat-getting-fatter dept.
from the fat-getting-fatter dept.
theodp writes "After initially rejecting Microsoft's File Allocation Table (FAT) patents, the USPTO has ruled them valid. From the article: 'Microsoft has won a debate where they were the only party allowed to speak, in that the patent re-examination process bars the public from rebutting arguments made by Microsoft, said unimpressed Public Patent Foundation President Dan Ravicher.'"
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So now... (Score:5, Interesting)
But what new FS will that be? FAT32? EXT2/3?
Re:So now... (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be stupid for Microsoft to enforce this patent because of the migration issue. If they were smart, they'd immediately turn around and put this into the public domain. If they don't, I can't see the marketplace relying on the hope that someday Microsoft won't try to enforce the patent. So if they were protecting their own interests that's fine, but they need to send a clear message that this move was only done to make sure that nobody would screw them.
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Re:So now... (Score:5, Informative)
Wishful thinking aside - Microsoft have allready stated they're going to enforce the patent:
From Microsoft's FAT licensing page: [microsoft.com]
At 25c a unity, thats going to add up to a helluva lot of money.
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Re:Food chain (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Food chain (Score:5, Informative)
Windows: http://freshmeat.net/projects/ext2ifs/ [freshmeat.net]
MacOS X: http://freshmeat.net/projects/ext2fs/ [freshmeat.net]
OS/2: http://freshmeat.net/projects/ext2-os2/ [freshmeat.net]
The problem is, they don't come pre-installed...
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Re:Food chain (Score:5, Insightful)
They're also kinda buggy. I'm using them right now since I couldn't format my 120GB IDE drive for FAT32 past 32GB or so (and there was no way in hell I was splitting it up into 4 pieces), and I wasn't too sure what else I could use to format for FAT32, so I used ext2.
It's been interesting what happens. If I look in a folder with thumbnails, it generates a thumb.db file, followed by a thumb.db::encryptable file. When you delete the ::encryptable file, Windows tends to choke (though it still deletes), so you have to delete several times if you've got a lot of images or video to delete.
I've also had problems with installing/uninstalling software. It wouldn't allow me to install World of Warcraft at all on it. I installed Final Fantasy XI on it, but then ran into problems that it couldn't save my settings. Even worse was that when I tried to uninstall it, I'd bluescreen and have to do it again. What I ended up doing was just deleting the folder from the disk, then uninstalling (which worked, which boggled my mind because there was nothing left for it to uninstall except registry entries).
They've been fine otherwise, but I'd rather have my FAT32 back. It's far less buggy, and it's fairly stable in Linux as well.
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Re:Food chain (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Food chain (Score:5, Informative)
It is written for OS X 10.2-10.3.
No, they didn't just omit 10.4 accidentally, or not update the page. It doesn't work at all:
Apple completely changed the kernel interfaces in Tiger and as such, a lot of work needs to be done to get the Ext2 driver running on Tiger. I started some of this work last year after WWDC, but there is still a lot to do and I don't have the time to finish things up right now.
...
I've started getting back to bringing up the driver on Tiger. Progress is going well, everything is compiling (but not necessarily running) except for the vnops file. I still have to implement locking and then testing before a release can happen.
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Re:Food chain (Score:5, Insightful)
I got it! Let's not pre-install any file system! Woah! That's a dangerous idea!
The fact that the manufacturer may pre-install a FAT based file system does not equate to the manufacturer being required to pre-install any file system.
Memory, whether in the form of RAM, EPROM (in all its various flavors), or some sort of spinning opto/mechanical media, does not have a file system until someone puts one there. Send out unformatted flash cards and they get whatever file system is applied by the user's equipment!
"Score:4, Informative"? You have alot of room to talk about moderation!
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Re:Food chain (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Even if they do have FAT pre-installed, that doesn't matter. A patent applies to the device that is using the FAT system (camera, computer, etc.), not the media it is on. (For example: A patent woudl apply to a printing press, but not to the book that is printed by the press.)
2) His point is that they don't have to have it pre-installed anyway. The device you put it in can do the formatting easily enough.
Also, just because something is modded-up that you think is wrong, doesn't mean that the moderation system is bad. You may be modded down merely for the comment.
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Re: $25c (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:So now... (Score:5, Informative)
Yep, they will pricing has been set to 25c per unit [dpreview.com].
Utterly crippling in the low margin, high volume USB storage market (especially at the low end)
and that means a mass migration to a new filesystem to avoid such payments.
And exactly what filesystem could that be? That is supported out of the box by 95% of desktop PCs?
This - if anyone was still wondering why a monopoly is so dangerous in the hands of an immoral company like MS.
You can use your overwhelming advantage in one market (desktop PCs) to exert influence in another.
But what new FS will that be? FAT32? EXT2/3?
Fat32? Patents cover it.
EXT2/3? Get real. Who wants to install 3rd party drivers every time you plugin your USB device?
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Re:So now... (Score:5, Interesting)
What exactly would prevent these low margin, high volume USB key manufacturers selling their memory sticks unformatted? It's not like hard drive manufacturers have to pay a FAT tax -- it's just the device manufacturers whose stuff actually uses FAT, like digital camera makers.
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Re:So now... (Score:5, Interesting)
But when a user pops their CF/SD/XD/whatever card out of their camera, they're going to want to access it without installing drivers, etc.
Personally I don't mind cameras, etc using ext2, or even better - a proper flash filesystem designed to deal with the problems inherent in writing to flash. But then I don't use Windows...
I'd be interested to know what the monopoly-police think about this - it seems that requiring people to pay a licence fee to use the only supported filesystem in the monopoly OS to allow interoperability with other devices might be considered an abuse of their market position.
It's also worth thinking about - the Linux kernel infringes this patent. Is Linux going to have FAT support ripped out of it now? That'd be really bad coz suddenly it can't interoperate with all those devices using FAT.
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MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Insightful)
C# and CLR on linux people take note, Microsoft never acts in good faith. Why file for patents unless you plan to enforce them? Ever heard the phrase "trust a fox"?
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Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:So now... (Score:4, Insightful)
But when a user pops their CF/SD/XD/whatever card out of their camera, they're going to want to access it without installing drivers, etc.
I think you missed the point.
The point was that the storage device manufacturers can ship their devices unformatted, so they don't run afoul of the patent, and don't have to build a royalty payment to the Evil Empire into their price. Since some storage devices are cheap enough that the royalty payment might constitute a significant part of their price, that's a good thing.
Cameras will probably still use FAT, for exactly the reason you mention. When you insert an unformatted card into a camera, the camera will format it. No problem. And an extra 25 cents in the price of a digital camera isn't going to mean much because cameras are more expensive anyway.
I'm more concerned about the potential effect on open source implementations. The Linux vfat filesystem, for example, does implement the long name/short name encoding scheme that is, I believe, the target of the patent. If Microsoft could force all of the major Linux distros to remove vfat support from their kernels, they could deal a significant blow to Linux's ability to interoperate with Windows and with most of the digital cameras on the market.
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Move Kernel.org to the EU (Score:4, Insightful)
*this would also mean Linus and everyone working on the kernel would have to move to the EU, and also a fork in the kernel in the US that does not included vFat.
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Re:So now... (Score:5, Insightful)
$0.25 added to the price of a camera is a trivial amount
$0.25 added to the price of every flash chip is not a trivial amount
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Re:So now... (Score:5, Interesting)
But as it caps at $250,000 the really high volume guys will be able to spread it out more... $250,000/10,000,000 = 2.5c
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Re:So now... (Score:5, Interesting)
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The Patents (Score:4, Informative)
So the patents in question all cover the same issue of a "common name space for long and short filenames". This would effect anyone using vfat and also potentially effect Rockridge and Joliet extensions for ISO 9660.
One thing to note, from looking at the licensing page, is that only "consumer electronics devices" and "removable solid state media manufacturers" are targeted. For the moment operating systems aren't listed.
One thing I have to ask myself whether makers of digital cameras would be legaly required to have to pay this license, despite them being listed in the "consumer electronics devices" section. The reason I ask this is because all the digital cameras I have seen to date still use 8.3 format file names (for example my Nikon is DSCN0000.jpg), therefore they are not using the technologies referenced by the patents.
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Re:So now... (Score:5, Interesting)
You wouldn't want to use standard journalling on a flash drive. IIRC for each write cycle at least 3 write actions are required: log in the journal that a write will be done (has to be synced to the disk), do the write, log in the journal that the write action ended successful. With flash, where you can only erase block-wise, this is not a good idea - for one its very slow, and on the other hand, the flash supports only so many write cycles. For journalling, special handling is needed as implemented e.g. in jffs2 [sourceware.org].
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MS FAT Patent Upheld (Score:5, Funny)
Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Linux? (Score:5, Informative)
US Patent 5758352 is more of a worry, because it relates to the way in which long and short filenames are stored in a directory structure by an (i.e., any) operating system. I cannot find any reference to this potentially much more damaging patent having been re-examined.
Note that the claims are not infringed by any system that does not support both long and short filenames. It is not FAT per se that is being protected, it is the backwards-compatible DOS filenames and the particular manner in which they are stored. You have to read the claims to understand this.
So the question about Linux etc., requires an analysis of the claims with an understanding of how the Linux FS driver works.
HTH
Anonymous European Patent Attorney
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I knew it (Score:5, Funny)
The patents (Score:5, Insightful)
What other parts of the FAT filesystem are protected by patents? This aspect of the FAT filesystem is just darn near obsolete as there aren't many systems that absolutely have to have the 8.3 format anymore are there?
Now, I have to admit, this is something that seems fairly specific to Microsoft's needs and is not a feature I've seen in any other filesystem. However, it also seems that this might be fairly easily just...excluded...without causing any really serious issues.
I am probably oversimplifying things.
FAT, Chests of drawers, and brainwashing (Score:4, Insightful)
FAT is such a technical piece of crap that I would have thought nobody would want to patent it, out of pure
embarrassment.
For non-technical people who don't grok filesystems, there's a good story about FAT here: CyberSnare [netaction.org].
What about UDF? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:What about UDF? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it is a bit heavy, but nowadays that should not really matter.
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Re:What about UDF? (Score:5, Informative)
Update:
So this probably won't work as a universal filesystem unless some pressure is put on MS and Apple to get native support for writing to UDF, unfortunately :\
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USB Sticks and CF cards (Score:5, Interesting)
As for digital cameras... well that was their decision. Unless I, as a consumer, am going to get fined for buying a piece of hardware that was unlicenced I don't care. The patents on FAT were no secret. They were, as are all the other patents, kept in a public place, next to the patents for lenses, CCDs, batteries and jpeg compression. As with any other patent, if you want to use the tech you have to pay the licence... and then pass that cost onto the customer.
Having a single filesystem that is accessible to all is good for everyone, especially Windows users. If Microsoft make it difficult to use digital cameras with their operating systems then they're going to piss a lot of people off. Digital cameras are one of the few reasons people buy a new computer so making it difficult to use digital cameras on Windows systems is not in their interests but perhaps worse for Microsoft is that people will install software that lets them use EXT3, Reiser4, UFS or heavens forbid, HFS+. People could use harddisks from other operating systems, with no need to defrag, decent meta information and genuine multi-user support!
I work with OS X, Debian and NT4 on a daily basis. The only way I can predicitably transfer files between them is using FAT16/32, and the limiting factor is NTs lousy support for alien filesystems. Microsoft should place FAT in the public domain. Its not strong enough to warrent a licence, and should really have become extinct along side the floppy disk. Charging people a licence to use a technology that was chosen because of a weakness in your main project, your operating system, is as lame as lecturers teaching from their own book.
Re:USB Sticks and CF cards (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that these patents weren't around when they were making these decisions. These FAT patents were *rejected*. Why would a company base a decision around patents that were rejected by the UPTO? This is yet another example of the USPTO's stupidity - VFAT was created how long ago? Some where between 92 and 95 IIRC. So at least 10 years ago. VFAT has had 10 years to creep into all corners of the industry, and only now it's going to start costing money? Imagine if 5 years after the motor industry really got going, the patent for internal combustion engines was finally approved. Progress of science and useful arts my ass.
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Re:USB Sticks and CF cards (Score:5, Informative)
Patent trolls are nothing new to society.
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Ship unformatted dammit. (Score:4, Insightful)
Easy Workaround (Score:4, Insightful)
Chain of events (Score:4, Informative)
2. "Mass Storage Class" added to USB that is so low level, the OS uses it as any disk, needing to support it's file systems
3. 95% of computers run windows and the ones that support USB only support FAT, forcing device manufacturers to use that as filesystem.
4. Patent filesystem and demand royalties after the fact
5. No need for "???"
6. Profit!
Yup, they planned this all along, the sneaky bastards.
Patenting arrays? (Score:5, Interesting)
While the rest of the world is exploring new ways to implement filesystems and thus producing innovation, what one of the most rich and powerful software company in the world does?
It bloody well enforce patents about twenty-five-years old bloody technologies.
Silly of me to think they were working to finish that WinFS of theirs, instead.
Look out for your helloworlds, they'll be knocking at your door with patent no. 1340032423 very soon.
PS: How much for these patents to expire? Fortunately I live in Europe, so I can keep FAT support in my GNU/Linux kernel
what the "fat" patents actually cover, and tactics (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be much less than a patent on fat as such.
When I last looked at the claims, it did seem that the ways claimed in the patent for handling the long filenames could be subgeneric, i.e. less than exhaustive of all the possibilities. (Granted that a situation like that can still mean that claims are wide enough to be a nuisance.)
So it would probably be more useful to the FOSS community to look at what is actually left from the actual MS patent claims, and whether they leave unpatented, free outside the claims, any other ways of handling the long filenames.
This would be as well as taking account of the possibility that the confirmed patent claims would still be invalidated by prior art or any other reason if it came to a court fight with the opposing party taking a full part there to provide full counterarguments.
This case and its result underline -- again -- the inadequacy of the US patent re-examination procedure -- mainly because of the unequal treatment that it gives to the party wishing to oppose the patent.
A failed attempt to get the patent invalidated is unhelpful to the community, because the patent holder can always point to the result when the prior art arguments come up again, and can argue that they have already been officially considered and rejected, so no need to review them.
It would arguably be better not to use US re-examination in the first place, if there is an assessment that the patent holder could wriggle out of the allegations of prior art when the other party is not there to answer -- because stopped by the procedure from answering to nail the errors in the arguments of the patent-holder.
It might also be recommendable for the PPF, instead of rushing in to raise proceedings that fail when there is no current and urgent need actually to bring them at that point in time, instead to give wide publicity first to the evidence and arguments against a nuisance patent, and to encourage debate about it.
The resulting debate could bring facts to light, e.g. that strengthen the prior art arguments.
New facts and evaluations can also shed light on the defendable scope of the claims, and make it clearer what techniques actually lie free outside them -- maybe even indicating that invalidation proceedings are not necessary.
At least, wider discussion can make it a bit easier for PPF or anybody else to weigh up the prospects of success before weighing in with action.
-wb-
CP/M 2.2 Prior art? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:CP/M 2.2 Prior art? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Embedded filesystems library affected (Score:5, Informative)
I've read the patents, they all cover the long filenames ability in the FAT filesystem. So basically as long as I do not implement long filesystem support, the EFSL should be free from patent problems.
If anyone with a deeper understanding of legalese is willing to comment on this, I and the users of EFSL would be grateful.
Since EFSL is targetted at embedded devices, it is used commercially (I am using it in a commercial product as well, and I know of several other projects that are doing the same) and thus the companies using it should know wheter or not they can use EFSL without paying a fee to microsoft.
FAT is about the ugliest filesystem around, it's a shame they dare to ask licensing fees for it.
FAT's valuable (Score:3, Informative)
USB HID Mass Storage devices apparently usually use FAT.
Now, granted, I don't know whether they implement long filename support (which is what Microsoft's patent is on, IIRC), but FAT is still very relevant in the embedded device world, even if desktop boxes are now using NTFS instead of FAT.
Re:Let it go Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
A patent on FAT doesn't really have much of a use for them now; at least none that I can think of. Just let the filesystem become an open standard now, MS.
I only wish that were true. The problem is that this is exactly the kind of thing that Microsoft has been after for quite a while. Now that it's everywhere, and it's something that every modern operating system has already implemented, Microsoft is going to go on a licensing spree. After all, they have already been talking about licensing it, [com.com] long before anyone else considered the idea that the patents might actually be approved.
There are only a few possible ways that this can turn out good:
At any rate, I hope that I'm wrong, and that this is just excessive paranoia on my part. But with Microsoft in this position, I don't think we should rely on optimism and just say that this will all be fine.
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Re:Right... (Score:3, Insightful)
Lots of mobile devices and flash memory cards use a form of FAT formatting. You wouldn't believe how many things in the world today use such a fragile filesystem, because it's easy, tested and does not need a strong protection for data loss.
And when Microsoft would suddenly like to force each manufacturer to start paying licence fees, they're all screwed.
Re:Less important than it sounds (Score:5, Informative)
So the methods bears all the marks of asserting broad patents against standardization initiatives. The set of patents they hold could just as easy be used to kill off mozilla or any other competitor, but they should be playing it safe not to upset any legislators too early.
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More accurate history of FAT (Score:5, Interesting)
Bill Gates has received the credit in print. The confusion probably happened because Bill Gates identifies himself completely with Microsoft.
Marc designed it to be optimized for floppies, with an allocation table sized to stay resident even in the tiny RAM of the machines of those days. He always thought it was a little silly to use it on hard disks.
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Re:More accurate history of FAT (Score:4, Funny)
Ronald McDonald http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Mcdonald [wikipedia.org] is the inventor of FAT. He has been shipping it to his clients for years now. Obviously this constitutes as prior art; One can see millions and millions of people who are dependant on FAT.
Fat is the basis for several of Ronald McDonald's technologies, including but not limited to:
- McCheeseburgers
- McFries
- Chicken McNuggets
- McGrittles
- McDonalds Coffee
He has tried to enforce his patents with the help of City Hall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayor_McCheese [wikipedia.org] and the Police Chief, Big Mac, but unfortunatly a criminal only known by the psuedonym "The Hamburgler" http://www.shermangalleries.com.au/artists_exhib/
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Re:alternatives and extent (Score:4, Informative)
ISO9660 is completely non-writeable - the filesystem is designed in such a way that you simply can't write to it. However, its successor, UDF, is writeable, and is already being used by flash drives which are too big for FAT (>32GB).
Second, what product is hit by this? People are going on about shipping unformatted media, but think about it: most devices that use the media have to speak FAT as well. Your camera can't write a file to the flash card if it doesn't understand how to read and write to it, even if rudimentary. The unformatted argument only works for media that will only be used on a PC, which seems like it will be a small minority.
Absolutely. Anything that has to access its own disk is at risk - the main things I see are cameras, MP3 players and possibly PDAs. A camera could just use another filesystem and be accessible via PTP, and since that just specifies how to transfer files, I suppose in theory it could be used for MP3 players as well, it has support from all major OSes.
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