USPTO Issues Microsoft A Patent For 60's Technology

theodp writes "On Tuesday, the USPTO issued U.S. patent no. 6,594,674 to Microsoft for a System and method for creating multiple files from a single source file, which describes a fundamental IBM Mainframe file structure, the Partitioned Data Set, that's been around since the 60's and is familiar to virtually anyone who's used a mainframe text editor in the past five decades. To the amazement of readers of an IBM newsgroup, neither Microsoft nor the USPTO examiners seem to be aware of the existence of the Mainframe-based prior art, which is not cited in the patent."

Comments

Reiser FS

[phnx90]

Doesnt Reiser FS 4 also have this feature.

Re:Of course MS is aware of prior art...

[Asprin]

Yup, I'm right. MS's DoubleSpace infringed on sisk compression patents held by Stac, Inc.

To wit:

Here is Stac's original complaint
One guy's opinion
Wikipedia entry (scroll down a ways to 1993)
I should just let you Google these yourself.

So, clearly filesystems like MS is describing have not only been around since before 2000, but MS lost lawsuits over them 10 years ago! THAT'S JUST ONE EXAMPLE!