All Things Microsoft > Microsoft as a Company
FAT patent back.
mobrien_12:
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/01/11/0555252.shtml
"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.'"
Aloone_Jonez:
I'm very interested about how they plan to inforce this, I imagine they'll be a few lawsuits.
Is there anything we can do about this?
How can we stop this happening in the EU?
worker201:
Apparently this doesn't affect my already FAT* formatted drives. It only affects consumer sales devices, like USBkeys that are preformatted. And since there are literally hundreds of filesystems out there, finding a new one to avoid the patent will be little more than an inconvenience. But still, this was a shitty thing to do. Fuck you and your patents, Microsoft.
cymon:
I really don't have sympathy for those affected with FAT drives. Someone should go and tell them that it's a new millenium, wake up and smell the hex. All of my drives are either HFS+ or EXT3. If you have to use FAT filesystems, aka you are Win98 user, this is just another reason to switch to Linux or BSD, or to buy a mac.
But still, the fact that Microsoft is taking credit for something they bought out is really dissapointing. Expected, but still unacceptable. Seeing that they only got it because people were barred from debating it is meaningless.
WMD:
Actually, FAT does have something good going for it: it's got mature, robust read/write support in nearly every OS out there. I would never use anything else for my USB flash drive. With FAT, I can plug it into any computer with USB and not worry.
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