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Patents Microsoft

Microsoft FAT Patent Rejected 225

Posted by michael from the 8.3-for-you-and-me dept.
dkh2 writes "It's being reported other places as well but, there's a very nice story over at Groklaw about efforts by the Public Patent Foundation (PubPat) to get Microsoft's patent on FAT restricted or revoked. Bearing in mind that Microsoft still has right of appeal, The USPTO has rejected Microsofts FAT patent." Our earlier story reported on efforts to overturn this patent.
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Microsoft FAT Patent Rejected More

Microsoft FAT Patent Rejected

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  • Excellent! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <<moc.liamg> <ta> <namtabmiaka>> on Thursday September 30, 2004 @10:34AM (#10395240) Homepage Journal
    A perfect example of how the system should work. The patent office doesn't need a reform, it needs to simply do a better job of following its own rules. Organizations like PubPat are a good thing, because they add another layer of checking (i.e. public responsibility) to the patent process.

    It may surprise many to know that patent officers are often promoted on how many patents they reject, not how many they approve. Thus it is in their interest to reject any applications with even the slightest possibility of being invalid. Yet it seems that ridiculous patents make it through anyway. How does this happen?

    The answer lies in the patent lawyers who draw up the papers. What they'll do, is that they'll draw up revision after revision of the idea until the patent office is confused enough to grant it. (Or perhaps they lucked upon a new patent officer.) That's why most of these patents seem so vague. The applicants are making sure that there's no way someone who doesn't have a very thorough education in the field of the patent could understand that the idea is unpatentable. Thus the idea passes through the process and must be challenged in court or via reexamination later.

    • Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mirko ( 198274 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @10:37AM (#10395297) Journal
      It may surprise many to know that patent officers are often promoted on how many patents they reject, not how many they approve.

      This is indeed surprising and probably partially true ... and partially false.
      Please, quote your sources.

    • Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Funny)

      by pbranes ( 565105 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @10:38AM (#10395327)
      They must have a huge turnover rate of new patent officers because it seems that stupid patents make it through constantly.

      I just broke amazon's patent by single-click the submit button to this post.

    • Not excellent (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Moderation abuser ( 184013 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @10:39AM (#10395342)
      Definitely *not* an example of how it should work. You have an external organisation doing the job that the patent office itself should be doing. That's a failure in need of reform. Perhaps if business processes and software were not patentable, the patent office might have more resources to devote to patents which are worthy of being granted.

      • Re:Not excellent (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jkabbe ( 631234 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @10:58AM (#10395400)
        There's a comparison to be made to the open source community. Why is open source software better? Because when you have thousands or millions of eyes looking at something you'll find more errors and have a better quality product in the end.

        The same logic applies to patents. A single examiner in the USPTO can't possibly research every possible document in existence looking for prior art. The USPTO needs to take advantage of the eyes of others. They do that through the pre-grant publication and reexamination proceedings. Because the publication process only allows for a short period to submit prior art it means that many patents will be granted that later get overturned.

        All the USPTO can make is a good effort and require that the patent application be written according to the guidelines so it can be understood by others (other patent lawyers that is).

        • A donation link for PubPat (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:22AM (#10395637)
          pubpat donations [pubpat.org].

          Even for this case alone, these guys deserve our support.

        • Re:Not excellent (Score:3, Insightful)

          by jsebrech ( 525647 )
          All the USPTO can make is a good effort and require that the patent application be written according to the guidelines so it can be understood by others (other patent lawyers that is).

          There are a number of inherent problems with the USPTO:

          * its financial resources are diverted to other ventures, instead of reinvested in patent examination, as a result, patent applications see less and less patent examination, and ...

          * patent examiners are woefully undertrained; they should be among the best in their fie

          • Re:Not excellent (Score:3, Informative)

            by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) *
            * patent examiners are woefully undertrained; they should be among the best in their field, but the low wage of examiners means that those who actually know what they're doing find other jobs

            Are we talking about the same country? In the US, the patent examiners are required to have an applicable degree before their considered for the job.

            As for their wages, the upper range is well over $100,000. Read the article I posted as info for the first reply.

            • Re:Not excellent (Score:3, Insightful)

              by sjames ( 1099 )

              In the US, the patent examiners are required to have an applicable degree before their considered for the job.

              Perhaps, but it's really hard for me to see how anyone with any relevant knowledge in computers could possibly not know that the FAT based filesystem has been well understood (not necessarily LIKED, just understood) by absolutely anyone who cared since the 1980s. It is well documented (disclosed) in numerous books, both from MS, and by third party authors and has been for over a decade. It's jus

          • Problem 2 (undertrained) seems to be a result of problem 1 (not enough money).

            A new law going into effect this fall (I believe) should go a long way to fixing this problem.

            Problem 3, what is patentable, was created by Congress. That's the place the problem needs to be fixed.
        • Seriously, if they aren't competent to do the job, their responsibilities should be reduced to the point that they are compentent. i.e. Patents should be published for an extended period for discussion before being granted by a vote from interested parties. The patent examiners responsibilities can then be reduced to managing the process.

        • Re:Not excellent (Score:2, Informative)

          by pebs ( 654334 )
          There's a comparison to be made to the open source community. Why is open source software better? Because when you have thousands or millions of eyes looking at something you'll find more errors and have a better quality product in the end.

          Not only the many eyes, but the many hands. Open source software has more potential for technical progress because it expands the possibility of who can contribute or make modifications (depends on license).
      • You can't expect the job to be done well entirely by the government - external organisations will need to help. Do you think that the government should be run without any oversight by the people?
        • I think the point is that the government should be able to run without oversight - i.e. it should always have oversight, but when it NEEDS oversight it's because it NEEDS to be changed.
      • While I agree the USPTO needs further reform, they have never been a regulatory agency. They have been a paid service bureau: you pay the fees, you get the registration. It is only this century's massive cultural shift to "game the system" which has exploited the USPTO's resources and capabilities to the maximum.

    • Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by theLOUDroom ( 556455 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:58AM (#10396098)
      A perfect example of how the system should work. The patent office doesn't need a reform, it needs to simply do a better job of following its own rules.

      Yes it does.
      The fundamental concepts behind the patent office have become unworkable.

      With our currently level of technology, it is unreasonable to believe that there is ANY organization that can sufficiently understand every technology on the planet in order to determine whether an invention is novel.

      Back in the days when the patent office was created, it might have been a reasonable concept but today it's not. There's way too much specialized knowedge out there for it to be practical.

      The patent ofice should admit what is has already become, a mere registy of "I invented this on this date" and drop all pretenses of actually being expert enough that all patents they accept are automatically valid.

    • Re:Excellent! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      > The answer lies in the patent lawyers who draw up the papers. What they'll do, is that they'll draw up revision after revision of the idea until the patent office is confused enough to grant it.

      I can vouchsafe for this. I have written several disclosures, some of which later made it into patent applications. The applications that the lawyers came up with, based on my disclosures, rendered the original idea unrecognizable - even to me!

      The final documents were so vague and open to interpretatio
    • The patent office doesn't need a reform, it needs to simply do a better job of following its own rules.

      This is a government office we're talking about. Following its own rules... that sounds like a major reform to me. :)

    • Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by lothar97 ( 768215 ) * <owen@NOSPAm.smigelski.org> on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:19PM (#10397167) Homepage Journal
      The answer lies in the patent lawyers who draw up the papers. What they'll do, is that they'll draw up revision after revision of the idea until the patent office is confused enough to grant it. (Or perhaps they lucked upon a new patent officer.) That's why most of these patents seem so vague.

      I have to strongly disagree here. I am a lawyer, and I work in an IP firm. I draft patent applications. There is a fine line that is walked when drafting patent applications. You have to be specific in what you're covering. If not, you can later lose the patent for not specifying what you invention actually does. That said, you do not want to be so narrow that you get limited rights. In many technological areas, you attempt to anticipate where the technology will go, and draft a patent application that can be applicable to other embodiements of your invention in the future. That said, in the patent application you also do have to provide specific examples of how your invention is used. Failure to do so means you did not fully enable your patent application, and can mean losing your patent.

      The applicants are making sure that there's no way someone who doesn't have a very thorough education in the field of the patent could understand that the idea is unpatentable. Thus the idea passes through the process and must be challenged in court or via reexamination later.

      Again, this is wrong. To be granted, a patent application has to fully enable the invention. That means someone reasonably skilled in the art has to be able to duplicate the invention. It does not have to be a common person, it has to be someone who competent in that field. Thus, you're not writing gene therapy patents so that grandma can understand them, and you're also not writing automobile suspension patents so that a computer programmer can understand them.

      That said, until the past 5 years or so, all computer related patent applications, including software, were reviewed by electrical engineers. The computer science degree was not recognized as a qualification to take the patent bar (and be able to submit or review patent applications). I think this is because places like ITT Tech give out CS degrees that are basically network tech certificates. The USPTO now recognizes accedited CS degrees, and have been hiring people with CS degrees. I predict in the future, as we have people who have been educated in CS, have written code, etc, we will see better computer-related patents in the future. I myself have a poli sci degree, but have been programming since age 6- thus I have written several patent applications that include computer code embodiments.

      • Re:Excellent! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        Again, this is wrong. To be granted, a patent application has to fully enable the invention. That means someone reasonably skilled in the art has to be able to duplicate the invention. It does not have to be a common person, it has to be someone who competent in that field. Thus, you're not writing gene therapy patents so that grandma can understand them, and you're also not writing automobile suspension patents so that a computer programmer can understand them.

        I must respectfully disagree. The way some

    • Re:Excellent! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jonbryce ( 703250 )
      I don't agree. Firstly, the patent should never have been granted in the first place, and secondly, even if it was a real invention with no prior art, it should have been granted.

      There are plenty of software patents (maybe about 10% of those granted) that are totally valid and legal in accordance with US law. These can be every bit as damaging as the invalid patents.

      Look at public key cryptography. A truly groundbreaking invention at the time, no prior art. Not obvious and so on. The patent has expir

  • IBM?? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30, 2004 @10:35AM (#10395247)
    Will they do the same with the thousand IBM useless patents?

    • Why IBM? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by hrvatska ( 790627 )

      Which useless IBM patent would you prefer they go after? Please cite why you think it is useless, and the benefit if it is overturned. Someone has to invest significant time in an effort to overturn a patent. You want to choose your targets carefully. The reason that this patent was considered important to overturn is not that it was owned by M$, but the potential impact if it wasn't.

      It almost seems as if you feel the motivation for overturning individual patents should be to go after organizations, ra

  • No FAT patent for Microsoft? (Score:4, Funny)

    by stretch0611 ( 603238 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @10:36AM (#10395267) Journal
    But Microsoft products are full of FAT...

    Oh, I'm sorry, I actually meant they are full of BLOAT, not FAT.

  • This happens at a high rate. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Amiga Lover ( 708890 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @10:36AM (#10395285)
    According to more of the text at groklaw, 70% of those patents challenged, are eventually rejected, just like this one.

    Far better than going through the courts once the patent is being defended by nazgul style lawyers is to defeat it on merits with the patent office. Looks like Dan Ravicher is onto something that could do with all our support.

    • Re:This happens at a high rate. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Halo1 ( 136547 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @12:21PM (#10396452)
      Even with the reduced costs, it's still a huge waste: first you have the company spending time and money on getting the patent, then the public or another company spends time and money to defeat it. This is not a structural solution, in fact it's some patch work that spends even more resources in order to keep an obviously non-working system afloat (by curbing its most perceived excesses).

      It would be much better to simply properly reform the patent system and to limit it again to what is was originally designed for in the 15th century, instead of keeping these artificial extensions (by courts, not by lawmakers!) into fields it was never intended to cover and for which it simply does not work [ugent.be].

      It is not a problem of examination, it is a problem of subject matter with which the patent system simply cannot deal. The European Patent Offices tries to deal with software patents by demanding "further technical effects" in the "technical contribution" of the "inventive step", but it results in almost exactly the same patents as in the US, just slightly differently worded.

  • Related News (Score:5, Funny)

    by knautilus316 ( 629085 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @10:37AM (#10395288)
    In related news, the US Patent Office also rejected Bill Gates' patent applications for fire and the wheel. ~Knautilus

    • Re:Related News (Score:4, Interesting)

      by slew ( 2918 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:30AM (#10395734)
      Yes, but the USPTO did accept Bill's patent on the door hinge [uspto.gov]...

      FWIW, I remembed this one [slashdot.org] from a few years back...
      • Except that is a valid and descriptive patent. I see no problem with it, unlike software patents which are usually vague and seemingly unpatentable.

  • FAT Patent Rejected? (Score:5, Funny)

    by grunt107 ( 739510 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @10:38AM (#10395315)
    Guess MS's case was a little THIN. {Ahhh, I feel better now}

  • Would a patent help? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tkrotchko ( 124118 ) * on Thursday September 30, 2004 @10:39AM (#10395340) Homepage
    Seems to me a patent would have run out by now.

    If you look here:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAT_file_system#Histo ry

    You'll see a couple landmarks:

    FAT12 - 1980
    FAT16 - 1983
    VFAT - 1995
    FAT32 - 1997

    But really, the FAT file system is 24 years old at this point. How can you patent something you did 24 years ago and you've not complained about it in all that time?

  • VFAT Patent (Score:5, Informative)

    by Coneasfast ( 690509 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @10:41AM (#10395362)
    i think i should remind everyone, this patent is not on the FAT filesystem itself, but the VFAT extension for long file names. (which, if you know how it works, is nothing innovative)

    • Re:VFAT Patent (Score:3, Funny)

      by HermDog ( 24570 )
      i think i should remind everyone, this patent is not on the FAT filesystem itself, but the VFAT extension for long file names. (which, if you know how it works, is nothing innovative)


      I found the implementation of long file names on VFAT inspirational myself. When I saw the details behind it shortly before Win95 debuted, I was inspired to look at this Linux thing I had heard about.

    • Re:VFAT Patent (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gewalker ( 57809 ) <Gary@Walker.AstraDigital@com> on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:13AM (#10395516)
      Actually, I would argue that implemtation was innovative. By accounts, MS spent considerable effort coming up with details necessary for this to work somewhat transparently. This is and should be protected by copyright -- you should not take MS code as your own.

      The idea was not however novel. The patent should fall.

      1 down, 100,000 to go.

      But I am of the opinion that software should never receive a patent. Software patents are harming innovation and the public, not helping them. Consitutional purpose of patents is the help the public by promoting innovation, not as a means of supporting more lawyers.

    • Please use correct implementation! (Score:5, Funny)

      by gosand ( 234100 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:36AM (#10395806)
      i think i should remind everyone, this patent is not on the FAT filesystem itself, but the VFAT extension for long file names. (which, if you know how it works, is nothing innovative)

      Don't you mean....

      i think i should remind everyone, this patent is not on the FAT files~1 itself, but the VFAT extens~1 for long file names. (which, if you know how it works, is nothing innova~1)

  • MS will try anything for the shareholders (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30, 2004 @10:42AM (#10395389)
    This is pathetic! How this ridiculous license scheme would work with so much of the population obese is beyond me. And the people who would be forced to pay the most, would be the least likely to be able to defend themselves in court without the use of a small crane to leave the house.

  • There are several patents involved here... (Score:5, Informative)

    by ubiquitin ( 28396 ) * on Thursday September 30, 2004 @10:43AM (#10395396) Homepage Journal
    ...such as the following:

    U.S. Patent #5,579,517 [uspto.gov] - Common name space for long and short filenames

    U.S. Patent #5,745,902 [uspto.gov] - Method and system for accessing a file using file names having different file name formats

    U.S. Patent #5,758,352 [uspto.gov] - Common name space for long and short filenames

    U.S. Patent #6,286,013 [uspto.gov] - Method and system for providing a common name space for long and short file names in an operating system

  • Hmmm Submitting Patents like Gamblers? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Yo Grark ( 465041 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:00AM (#10395408)
    On a warm summer's evenin' about a patent bound for approvals,
    I called up the patent officers; they were too tired to speak.
    They just took turns a starin' at the leagal techno babble
    'til mind-numbing boredom overtook them, and errors began to creap.

    One said, son, I've made a life out of readin' people's patents,
    And knowin' what their prior arts were by the way they dotted their i's.
    So if you don't mind my sayin', I can see you're really reachin.
    For my sons university education, I'll give you some advice.

    So I met and wrote his man a cheque, and he looked the zero's that followed.
    Then he bummed a cigarette and asked me for a light.
    And the night got deathly quiet, and his face lost all expression.
    Said, if you're gonna play the game, boy, ya gotta learn to play it right.

    You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to appeal 'em,
    Know when to walk away and know when to sue.
    You never count your patents when you're sittin' at the judges table.
    There'll be time enough for countin' when the approval's done.

    Now ev'ry patent leecher knows that the secret to survivin'
    Is knowin' what to sell off and knowing what to keep.
    'cause in ev'ry merger's a winner and ev'ry buyout a loser,
    And the best that you can hope for is to grab patents while people sleep.

    So when he'd finished speakin', he turned back towards the window,
    Crushed out his cigarette and faded off to sleep.
    And somewhere in the darkness the patent officer, he got even.
    But in his final words I found a crooked officer I could keep.

    You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to appeal 'em,
    Know when to walk away and know when to sue.
    You never count your patents when you're sittin' at the judges table.
    There'll be time enough for countin' when the approval's done.

    You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to appeal 'em,
    Know when to walk away and know when to sue.
    You never count your patents when you're sittin' at the judges table.
    There'll be time enough for countin' when the approval's done.

    With nods to Kenny Rogers

    Yo Grark

  • Makes you wonder about SCO licensees (Score:3, Insightful)

    by OwlWhacker ( 758974 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:00AM (#10395410) Journal
    Here's what Ravicher says about this development, "I hope those companies that chose to take a license from Microsoft for the patent negotiated refund clauses so that they can get their money back."

    But what about those who have paid SCO for licenses to use Linux? Even if they have negotiated refund clauses, it seems very unlikely that they'll get one.

  • Too the one who said this is stupid. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Software is covered under copyright and should NEVER EVER be patented. It would be like me writing a certain kind of story and then after that no one whould be ever allowed to write that kind of story without paying me a royalty first.

    Repeat after me, software should NEVER EVER be granted a patent.
    • I submitted a story to /. a while back, about someone who'd written a novel that involved an unusual game show. Then (before the novel was published, IIRC) some TV station decided to produce a show based on the same concept.

      The novelist, it turns out, had patented the idea of this TV program and threatened to sue them.

  • Too Bad (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:01AM (#10395417) Homepage Journal
    Too bad it got rejected. I was hoping the patent would push people away from FAT. Perhaps just the patent will do the trick, though.

  • Damnit!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by lcorc79 ( 549464 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:06AM (#10395453) Homepage
    Damnit!!! I was really hoping MS would get a patent on FAT, so I could tell my ass it was infringing and draft up a cease & desist .....

  • Huh, what? (Score:5, Funny)

    by slaad ( 589282 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:08AM (#10395473)
    Woa....they can reject patents? ;)

  • Whewww (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:12AM (#10395504)
    I am a little overweight and I have some frieds that eat too much and don't get enough exercise. I know we will all be relieved to hear that we don't have to pay royalties on our cellulite.
    • > I have some frieds that eat too much

      If I were you, I'd dump the frieds and start hanging out with the steameds and the lightly grilleds.

  • Interoperability alone doesn't help competitors mu (Score:5, Informative)

    by ShatteredDream ( 636520 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:15AM (#10395557) Homepage
    If file system compatibility really helped THAT much, then BeOS would have owned Linux and Be would be a viable contender today. BeOS' support for Fat32 and NTFS, especially in how easy it was for users to mount them from the desktop, was well above that of the Linux desktops of BeOS' day. When you wanted to mount a drive, a right click on the desktop showed the Fat32 and NTFS partitions as plainly as a BFS partition so the whole process was the same to John Q. Not only that, but BeOS back then also automatically recognized new partitions, something Linux did not and still doesn't seem to do well.

    What keeps people loyal to Microsoft in the U.S. is the popularity of its products combined with the variety of games and home software for Windows. Office and Windows have a symbiotic relationship, you take down one, the other goes down eventually, but Windows is more important to Microsoft because the home market provides a solid foundation for Office. Installing a game on Windows is easy for the average home user, but not on Linux.

    Game developers don't want to waste their time getting around that. Until a very comprehensive, attractive way to install home software is availible, Linux and other OSS projects will be left behind. The best way for Linux developers to get around this is probably to make a concerted effort to emulate Apple's framework system so that all of the dependencies one needs to have in place are part of the Linux game's ".app directory." Either that or program the games in a combination of C# and C and pray that Mono doesn't die on users.

    Maybe it's just my perspective, but interoperability with things like FAT only do so much for the average user. In the long run, it's a lot more complicated than that. If interoperability were the key, then BeOS and MacOS X would have eaten Windows alive a long time ago.
    • The ".app" system has a serious flaw; duplicated libraries. Look what happened when a flaw was discovered in GDI+'s JPEG code.
      • There's an answer to that: all libraries in .apps are .frameworks. The system knows what .frameworks are available and uses the newest.
        Also, common frameworks can be stored centrally to avoid bloat due to redundant frameworks.
        Main advantage in the central storage case is easy installation: since all resources (such as headers, images, sounds or translations) are inside the framework folder, it's sufficient to drag the framework to your frameworks folder.
    • Not only that, but BeOS back then also automatically recognized new partitions, something Linux did not and still doesn't seem to do well.

      Type "cat /proc/partitions".
      Seems to work fine for me.
      If I plug in a USB disk, the new partitions will automatically show up in that list.
      • I think what my grandparent meant was that, in BeOS, you stick in a new disk and, lo, it is merely a click away. (I never used BeOS for any serious length of time, so I am just guessing.) Here in Linux-land, we cat /proc/partitions, then su, then mount, then become mortal once more, then use, then su again, then umount, then go get a beer. Oh sure, we could just add /dev/sda1 to /etc/fstab, but then what happens when we want to use two USB disks? Or maybe we sometimes use a USB Zip drive? (They use partitio
        • I think what my grandparent meant was that, in BeOS, you stick in a new disk and, lo, it is merely a click away. (I never used BeOS for any serious length of time, so I am just guessing.) Here in Linux-land, we cat /proc/partitions, then su, then mount, then become mortal once more, then use, then su again, then umount, then go get a beer.

          That all depends on how your distribution is configured. If you're using knoppix, for example, then the drives do automatically pop up on the desktop.

          Ask for getting
    • Apple's .app system is based on NeXT's .app structure, which is implemented / supported by GNUStep. One of the nicest features of it is that it can contain binaries and resources for multiple platforms / architectures, allowing the same .app bundle to be used for OS X and GNUStep on multiple CPU types.

  • MSWords -- A patened approach (Score:5, Funny)

    by theAmazing10.t ( 770643 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:17AM (#10395570)
    MSWords -- a patented approach for combining letters of the alphabet into meaningful units that can be "read" (for info on "reading", see MS patent 9997645, "A method for interpreting strings of alphabetic characters")

  • I have a solution (Score:4, Funny)

    by Bin_jammin ( 684517 ) <Binjammin@gmail.com> on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:18AM (#10395593)
    What we need to do is fight fire with fire. For instance, I should take out a patent on ugly, then sue the holy hell out of Gates and Balmer. At $1 per degree of ugly, I could buy Peru.

  • A patent... REJECTED? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Writer ( 746272 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:18AM (#10395594)
    The USPTO has rejected a patent? I can't seem to find a site that tells you the weather in hell, because I'm curious to see if it has frozen over.

  • MSFT FAT Patent was not a problem (Score:4, Informative)

    by Hal_Porter ( 817932 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:41AM (#10395849)
    Because it covers only one method of long filename to short filename conversion.

    The scheme patented covered one possible way to convert long filenames into valid dos names by truncating the name and adding ~nn. Windows does this by counting the number of short names, and using this count as the nn value. E.g.

    ALongFilename1.txt will have short name ALONGF~1.TXT
    ALongFilename2.txt will have short name ALONGF~2.TXT

    This is bad because you need to make multiple scans thought the directory to generate the short filenames. There is another patent for a data structure to speed this process up.

    You don't have to use this short filename generation method - VxWorks dos FS 2.0 uses a hex hash of the long filename for instance. Thus you'd get this

    ALongFilename1.txt will have short name 37f38765.TXT
    ALongFilename2 will have short name (more random gibberish).

    The idea here is that if you never use Dos, the ugliness of the short filenames doesn't really matter because you only see the long ones.

    You could also use the position in the directory for the last two numbers - there are endless possibilities. Provided you link the long filename and short filename correctly - there is a checksum byte in the long filename which links back to the short one, Windows will still be able to see both versions of the filename.

    Of course for many applications like digital cameras, 8.3 is still OK.

  • Windows Fat Reduction? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:43AM (#10395876) Homepage
    So, with the MS Fat Patent rejected, does that mean we will see a new slimmer Windows OS?
  • Aren't 95% of us North Americans FAT?

  • One Down, Three to Go (Score:4, Informative)

    by harriet nyborg ( 656409 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:55AM (#10396051)
    Put the cork back in the champagne bottle. The '517 patent is but one of four patents that are included in Microsoft's FAT Licensing Program [microsoft.com] that include:

    U.S. Patent #5,579,517

    U.S. Patent #5,745,902

    U.S. Patent #5,758,352

    U.S. Patent #6,286,013

    If Mr. Ravicher is correct and 70% of patents are revoked in re-examination, then at least one of these will survive.

  • Not a FINAL Rejection (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:58AM (#10396106)
    There is a lot of dancing in the streets going on here. However, this was not a final rejection, thus Microsoft still has the opportunity to convince the Patent office that their patent should be allowed. The only thing that has happened is that the PTO has looked at the stuff that was given to them by PubPat and said that they think that PubPat has made an initial case that the patent should be rejected. Microsoft still has the opportunity to have it changed and to offer amendments that narrow the scope of the patent. I would have been EXTREMELY surprised if Microsoft did not get an initial rejection after the PTO decided to accept the reexam.

    I guess being a Patent attorney gives me a little different view on things like this.

  • PUBPAT and OSRM (Score:4, Informative)

    by tbird20d ( 600059 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @12:28PM (#10396537)
    I'll connect the dots in case people haven't been paying attention. Dan Ravicher is the head of PUBPAT. He is also affiliated with OSRM (Open Source Risk Management), the group that issued the press release about Linux patent risks.

    It's not too hard to connect the dots and see the relationship between OSRM's business model (which benefits from reduced patent risk for Linux) and PUBPAT's agenda, which is to rid the world of bogus patents.

    Since this is Slashdot, I don't expect many people will recant their negative comments about OSRM, but I hope most people recognize this as the type of work that OSRM/PUBPAT can do that will have some real positive benefits for Linux, whether you buy OSRM's insurance or not.

  • Does innovation suffer? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by runderwo ( 609077 ) * <runderwo.mail@win@org> on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:40PM (#10397404)
    I'm certain this has consequences for innovation and economic motivation, according to the dire forecasts by intellectual property holding groups (who are clearly experts on the issues involved). Can someone elucidate on what we as a society are giving up by not allowing inventors exclusive rights to their inventions?
  • that's phat. err, fat. uh, FAT.

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