Author Topic: MS FAT patent invalidated  (Read 976 times)

mobrien_12

  • VIP
  • Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 2,138
  • Kudos: 711
    • http://www.geocities.com/mobrien_12
MS FAT patent invalidated
« on: 1 October 2004, 01:13 »
Groklaw Story

Well the MS FAT patent has been overturned thanks to the public patent foundation

Fricken Sweet.

FAT is not that great of a filesystem, but it has become a de-facto standard for cross-platform removable media including (for example) floppy disks, zip disks, flash drives, MP3 players, and some digital cameras. While it's not great, it's also not too bad for these limited appications.

This means that MS won't be able to use it's patent to lock out interoperability with open source projects.
In brightest day, in darkest night, no evil shall escape my sight....

WMD

  • Global Moderator
  • Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 2,525
  • Kudos: 391
    • http://www.dognoodle99.cjb.net
MS FAT patent invalidated
« Reply #1 on: 1 October 2004, 03:24 »
OH YES! \o/  :D

This is good for two reasons:

1.  Didn't DEC or Gary Kidall make FAT anyway?
2.  FAT is 20+ years old.  Make money off something newer.
My BSOD gallery
"Yes there's nothing wrong with going around being rude and selfish, killing people and fucking married women, but being childish is a cardinal sin around these parts." -Aloone_Jonez

WMD

  • Global Moderator
  • Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 2,525
  • Kudos: 391
    • http://www.dognoodle99.cjb.net
MS FAT patent invalidated
« Reply #2 on: 1 October 2004, 07:34 »
quote:
Originally posted by WMD:
1.  Didn't DEC or Gary Kidall make FAT anyway?

Take that back.  They didn't.  MS was really patenting the (kludgey) method of using long file names in FAT, and decided it was enough to control who could use the file system.
My BSOD gallery
"Yes there's nothing wrong with going around being rude and selfish, killing people and fucking married women, but being childish is a cardinal sin around these parts." -Aloone_Jonez

hm_murdock

  • VIP
  • Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 2,629
  • Kudos: 378
  • The Lord of Thyme
MS FAT patent invalidated
« Reply #3 on: 1 October 2004, 12:10 »
This is something I'm glad they lost. They actually had plans to fuxor things up for everybody.
Go the fuck ~

TB

  • Member
  • **
  • Posts: 112
  • Kudos: 0
MS FAT patent invalidated
« Reply #4 on: 2 October 2004, 01:04 »
I just hope that the other 3000 or so patent applications filed by M$ this year also get rejected. Is it really that difficult for the patent office to tell M$ that most of their applications are BS?