Germany Rejects Microsoft FAT Patent

Askmum writes in with news that a German patent court has ruled Microsoft's patent on FAT invalid in that country, finding that it is "not based on inventive activity." Just one of 6,000-odd patents Microsoft has amassed since a 1991 memo from Bill Gates turned around the company's attitude to patents.

Re:1980

[jimstapleton]

Probably not, they are unlikely to look at patents that haven't expired.

Sadly most of MS's patents are post 95 by the article (they had around 100 in 95, 1000 in 99 and 6000 now If I remember correctly?)

This is great... fta

[micromuncher]

FTA "[Prevents company from] lay claim to basic computing procedures that in the final analysis are trivial."

And, FAT is a trivial format, (as are Apple DOS 16, ProDOS, CODOS, and other ancient formats) but FAT has the caveat it is commonly used today in devices such as digital cameras (So pfffft on the person who said its not used.)

I completely agree with the german PO that a patent has to be on something innovative and inventive. Every time I see a patent for a double-linked list or radix sort I get the shivers.

I have to believe ...

[LaughingCoder]

... that this is a don't care for MS. FAT is ubiquitous - thumbdrives use it, digital cameras use it, mp3 players use it. In fact it's hard to find a piece of solid state media that doesn't come pre-formatted with FAT. Because of that, I guess I was always under the impression FAT was in the public domain; it really surprised me to see there was a patent at all. Does anyone out there know if MS collects royalties or license fees from this patent?

Re:Ya gotta fight fire with fire

[Scott7477]

I agree with you. The article in ArsTechnica pointed out that at the time of the memo, Microsoft's position in the market was radically different than it is today. MS was a relatively small company compared to the big boys in the enterprise world like IBM and Sun and Novell. The way software was distributed was totally different as well. Given that the Internet was primarily an academic and military system at the time, companies were still sending you boxes of floppies. I recall from graduate school at that time seeing a business plan that contemplating distributing software through vending machines! It seems absurd now, but at the time it wasn't that far out of the ball park. In any case, based on reading the excerpt from the memo, Gates was trying to figure out how best to make money from the business of writing software. Today, the open source community is in the same boat. We want non-restrictive licenses (like MIT's), but also want to put food on the table.

I don't excuse MS's anti-competitive business practices, and a lot of their frankly dumb decisions over the years. But I can see where Gates has something of a point. To me, since software costs practically nothing to copy, the primary way to make a profit at software is in support. Most general-use software is rather simple to produce these days (see how many different text editors there are). So I don't think most types of software should be patentable.

Surprised they didn't come up with an alternative

[91degrees]

Isn't this the patent on the hack that allows Windows 95 file systems to be used in MSDOS? It's a hack for back compatibility for a system that's completely obselete. And I'm not sure where its used. All cameras I've used use MSDOS 8.3 filenames. Mayeba few portable devices use FAT on flash, and maybe flash relies on this method or something ut I'd have thought this would have been thought of before. Why didn't the standards organisations come up with a better, free filesystem for USB filesystem devices or for flash or something? FAT is cheap and nasty and, as I mentioned earlier, long filename support is a hack.

Re:Ya gotta fight fire with fire

[hxnwix]

Did you know that Microsoft is a key supporter of software patents worldwide? They're not just abusing the system - they helped create it.

So yes. I do blame them.

Microsoft's Full Patent List [Browsable]

[RembrandtX]

Just in case anyone was interested, here is a full list of Microsoft's Issued Patents [Current as of a week or two ago].
Its hosted at a free patent searching tool, so don't blame me if their servers melt. :)

Microsoft's Patents [patentmonkey.com]

Re:Real Prior Art

[LWATCDR]

No. The concepts behind FAT way predate CP/M. My guess is IBM probably developed most it. They did invent the floppy disk and they had to have some kind of format. CP/M used the 8" Floppy standard that IBM developed so I would guess it was IBM.

Re:Ya gotta fight fire with fire

[RyanL2112]

Even if found guilty there is no corporate equivalent of a prison sentence.

uhhh... I'm pretty sure a huge ass fine that puts the company into bankruptcy and/or out of business could be equated to a loss in freedoms.

Re:Ya gotta fight fire with fire

[sumdumass]

I don't think it was ever intended to shield executives from anything. The company in itself is really at the will and direction of the executives.

I think the problem lies in the belief that if you own the company you can tell it what to do. This is only the case if your one of the executives. And if that is the case, it does nothing to shield you from your part in whatever crime you and your company were involved in. Unfortunately, Many investors and owners take a hands off approach to a lot of their businesses and when something does happen, some people take this separation as some kind of proof that you were shielded from whatever.

This, I think is the disconnect people have. I'm trying to think of a craft analogy but I don't think I can put it into a story. I guess the best way to look at it is if someones retirement account invests in my company and my employee has an accident that results in someone getting killed, Should they person who owns stock of my company be held accountable for this if it causes the company to go bankrupt? The stock holders are part owners and you can have shares in an LLC. What if that retirement account is your? Should you be held liable for something you had no control or influence over? I'm not sure these things are thought thru completly.

Re:Ya gotta fight fire with fire

[Bozdune]

There are too many counterexamples to your premise that monopolies will break up naturally on their own. The ADL scandal, for example, shows that large companies, when left alone by regulators, conspire among themselves to ensure market dominance, mutual survival, and high prices.

IBM's troubles started when they were slapped upside the head by the government's ultimately unsuccessful antitrust lawsuit. You may be too young to remember the bad old days when IBM refused to share specifications on their equipment, refused to interoperate with foreign peripherals, sued everyone who tried, and so on. They were Really Bad Guys. I remember; I lived through it. Now because of SCO and Linux they are suddenly Good Guys; but be careful, because a tiger can't change his stripes.

However, none of the above impacts your point about government cooperating with industry; certainly that's bad, certainly it contributes to lack of market flexibility, and certainly it needs to stop (although it won't). But government does have a responsibility to step in when anticompetitive behavior becomes extreme, as happened with AT&T. I remember my mom "saving up" for long distance calls -- literally. You really had to think hard before dialing "1". You couldn't buy a phone, except through AT&T, and you had to rent it month by month (by the time you had rented it for years, you had bought it 20 times over). And they had to come out and "install" your phone, and God forbid if they found an "illegal" extension phone (they just shut off your service, period). And so on. It was outrageous. The bastards were swimming in ill-gotten gains, and they deserved to be smashed into paste, as they were.