Slashdot Mirror
PUBPAT Challenges Microsoft's FAT Patent
An anonymous reader writes "The Public Patent Foundation filed a formal request with the United States Patent and Trademark Office today to revoke Microsoft Corporation's patent on the FAT File System, touted by Microsoft as being 'the ubiquitous format used for interchange of media between computers, and, since the advent of inexpensive, removable flash memory, also between digital devices.' In its filing, PUBPAT submitted previously unseen prior art showing the patent, which issued in November 1996 and is not otherwise due to expire until 2013, was obvious and, as such, should have never been granted."
. . . bought off PUBAT yet? Given M$' track record with the EU and Sun, I figured they'd throw some money at the problem until it shut up.
I don't mean to play devil's advocate, but is it ok to challenge patents just because they become standards?
But doesn't this just validate that the patent system albeit a little broken generally works.
Surely everyone has to realise that patent officers can't be geniuses in their respective fields, because the genuieses are off inventing and discovering things.
Hence the onus should be on making it easy to revoke granted patents the minute prior art is discovered. Otherwise it could take patent officers years to validate each patent.
Funtage Factor: Purple
This only weakens the concept of intellectual property. Why invent if you're just going to have to fight legal battles for the length of your patent?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I don't mean to play devil's advocate, but is it ok to challenge patents just because they become standards?
If they were standards before they were patented, then yeah - I would say that's grounds for challenging them.
If they were a stealth patent on an idea that was common knowledge at the time (and I'm thinking especially of things that just weren't practical due to lack of CPU power that are blindingly obvious as well) then yeah, definitely.
Anyway, all the devil's advocates are on loan to SCO at the moment, raking in megabucks from the warchest.
Like really... I mean, parts of the human genome are "obvious" and therefore shouldn't be patented.... no wait...
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
If you don't have a problem to solve, then please don't invent. Save me some work. Sheesh.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
One down, hundreds to go!
The patent process has become a hindrance to software development in many cases and it should definitely be much harder to get patent of this kind. Hopefully more patents in the U.S. and worldwide get challenged and discarded.
I really hate to sound like a troll (and I left out any "???" step), but...
1. Patent random, generic idea
2. Sit on patent
3. Sue people
4. Profit!
It seems to me to be a trend all too often in the world today, particularly with software. Heh, I wonder what the world would be like if the first caveman to make fire had patented the process of creating friction by rubbing two sticks together.
In regards to this context, I do not see why Microsoft should hold any power with this patent, seeing as how they sat around and let people adopt the format as a de facto standard. It's not like there is any secret to it, and I see it as just another plan of theirs to make people dependent on them and then extort them. The first hit is always free, huh?
Nyo nyo, the Neko Boy has spoken.
It has been quite frustrating to see companies not bother to take these steps. Corporations with significant IP portfolios tend to let it slide knowing that they can just exchange usage of their own silly patent rights if there was ever friction. In the end only the new players (aka innovators!) are victims.
Microsoft has actively participated in various forums to get the world hooked on FAT. Now they're wanting to charge for it.... Part of how they got there was by exerting their power over the desktops (which smells of anti-trust). For example FAT is part of the SmartMedia spec and has got incorporated into SmartMedia cards and hence the peripherals. I bet Microsoft would have refused to get involved with a non-FAT file system and essentiually the camera etc vendors had to choose between some other standard and being able to hook their cameras to Windows PCs.
Now there are a lot of other flash file systems out there that work with SmartMedia cards etc, but they are not supported by MS and never will be.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It's called Science.
Here's how it works.
You discover something. To let everyone know about it, you write a paper, and you send it off to a journal. That Journal has other experts in the field read what you've done. If they like it, they tell everyone else about it by printing it up in this little book. If they don't, they tell you to a) revise it, or b) go away.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure thats what you're looking for.
Why wait until now to pursue it? Well if they'd kicked off an action in 1996 the mass of consumer electronic devices (cameras, MP3s etc) would likely not have adopted FAT.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Before, the patent (on browser plugins) being challenged belonged to an individual who was suing Microsoft and even managed to get an injunction (can't remember whether they actually ordered Microsoft to pay or not).
That patent was quickly challenged and nullified. While the w3c and other groups initiated the challenge, I think the reason the patent was nullified was that it belonged to someone who was being used to (successfully) target Microsoft.
Now the patent being challenged belongs to Microsoft, and is being challenged by some small-time nobody (as far as Big Business is concerned).
My prediction is that either the challenge itself will be rejected, or the patent office will "review" the patent and find it "valid". Not because of any merits the patent may have, but because of who owns it. The guys running the patent office know who butters their bread, and it ain't organizations like PUBPAT.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
I think patents should be treated the same way as copyright - if you don't enforce it, you obviously don't want it. Why is Microsoft going to enforce FAT patents now? If they'd enforced them earlier, noone would have used FAT, they'd have found something else to use.
No big deal?? Every disk that's preformatted with FAT is grounds for a retroactive refund. That means every preformatted thumb drive, flashcard, zip disk, stuper disk, and FLOPPY DISK since 1996 would be due if it were retroactive. I have no idea how many that is, but they've been paying Microsoft for a pretty long while, and it's no small amount, I'm sure.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Here's the arithmetic: 2013 - 1996 = 17 - the standard patent lifespan (unless you're a pharmaceutical company, but that's another story for another day).
FAT was in use well before 1996 but 1996 is when the patent was approved|awarded (which is what everyone needs to pay attention to when they scream bloody murder in other postings.
Now, you have to wonder how long a business has to sit on material before they submit it to the patent office. This is generally one year. Even in spite of this, that's 1995. That's still much later than when FAT was first used.
I know we all like to see Micro$oft get slapped around, but I think this is another case of jay walking and faking being hit by car to file a law suit. If this [even] gets past the preliminaries, it'll be settled out of courts for a reasonably small, undisclosed sum of money.
Scariest: It looks like it boils down to using a second directory entry link to the real directory as meta-data storage.
Not so scary, if you don't want to pay the money, use regular fat, and make your device more useful by storing a bunch more useful metadata in the files! Maybe batch-renaming them based on common meta-data when they're transfered to say a PC. (assuming one isn't using a card reader of course).
Most of patents are filed today by megacorporations, as a weapon against competition, and many of those patents are trivial extensions of known principles and ideas.
someone did this! hopefully they will win so we could start challenge all these stupid software patents that people gets...
If the combination of ideas was so obvious, why didn't the last of the submitted prior art patent it, since they're so skilled they can claim worthy patents when there is significant pressure to claim everything thing concievable at the time of the filing?
Perhaps they didn't patent it because it *was* obvious. The idea that every idea or hack or workaround or anything else that pops into someone's head should be patented is just ridiculous. It doesn't matter if you did something first that nobody else has done. Perhaps nobody else needed to do it. That doesn't make it patent-worthy. Hell, it's getting so that you can't do a damn thing without major financial backing just to try to figure out if you're violating someone, somewhere's, patent. Even if you're not, you'll still need the financial backing to fight off the inevitable lawsuits from all the vague and overbroad patent holders out there that are trying to hustle anyone that tries to create anything these days.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Wait a second... Assume Data Structures A and B (c-style pseudo code):And take Operating Systems X and Y, where Y is implemented from scratch to work similar to X. Please take into account that the source tree of Y currently is over 200 MB (2.6.5-mm1, unpacked).
Do you seriously want to claim that the difference between A and B is anywhere close to the difference between X and Y?
IMO that's a bit like telling me that accidentially inhaling (and thereby killing) a fly in my sleep is pretty similar to the holocaust. Or claiming that a single molecule of Water is pretty similar to the atlantic ocean. Or claiming that the "word" "GATC" is pretty similar to all of mankind.
Free as in mason.
After companies got burned by people reading their patents and adding inventions that were a shade of obvious, they took the tack of patenting everything and variation they could concieve of. That became the standard, and it predates the patents cited as prior art.
The good and bad of that, I'll leave to wiser people that myself to discuss, but that is the status quo. And that is exactly what PUBPAT is challenging. If they can beat Microsoft with that argument, all the 'little' inventions can/will get overturned too. And I assure you that after many years, PUBPAT will probably be one of the very exceptional David's on a field of Goliaths.
It's a huge change, and in the long run I would predict it would chill innovation in the US, lead to more draconian NDAs & Non-Compete agreements, aid the big guys in consoladating IP to be used against the market more than each other, encourage more secrecy, less patenting, more espionage, and possibly give rise to a preference to patent inventions in other countries. If I had played a lot more Elevator Action, I might see this as a positive development.
Maybe the small inventions like this lead to the larger more important inventions and abstractions. I don't know. Maybe they get brighter less flexible more ambitions people thinking about the true solutions to succeed the collections of hacks. And the publication and protection of those inadaquate hacks, as well as the promissed protection for the imagined invention are a necessary step to the launching pad. Maybe no one does. Maybe the idea of the perfect solution to the mess is an illusion, and we've just got to find the mess that's the best. Maybe we've already found it marveling at the green-ness of grass we might have had.
Really? And all this time I thought companies actually wanted piles of patents that nobody ever uses.
i was hoping people would stop using FAT because of the patent and use UFS or some kind of journaling flash filesystem. If they just defined it as part of the standard when they defined a flash interface (or the next USB revision?) then maybe microsoft's hand could be forced. Infact I think MS would be for a more stable and reliable filesystem (because even they admit that FAT isn't very good by not recommending using it when NT got NTFS)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Patents don't cover a concept, they cover a method.
Unfortunately these days it seems when you patent a method it covers the concept.
There are two problems here.
One is the type of technology being patented. We're seeing more and more patents on procedures (business, medical, software etc). Procedures can be described in terms broad enough to cover situations that didn't even exist when the patent was filed, and it's hard to know what term will be too broad tomorrow: "computer network" was specific enough 15 years ago but too vague 5 years later.
Two is the way patents are used today. The goal of a patent was to allow the inventor to license and sell their technology through partners without fearing the loss of ownership (my favorite example is Dolby noise-reduction). But today, many US patents have become no more than instruments of litigation. They're not there to let the inventor find partners, but to let the patent owner shoot down their competitors.
An open-source patent office may fix the first problem by declining all procedural patents, but that's better solved by reforming the patent office's charter. It won't fix the second problem because it can't predict how the inventor will use a legitimate patent.
I.e. they're patenting a work around for a stupid shortcoming, for which the only reason nobody else was doing it was that they designed their systems to be more flexible in the first place?
FAT was originally designed in the 1980's, and although long filenames might've been considered, hardware limitations may have made them infeasible at the time. Also, FAT wasn't initially designed by Microsoft; the first version was released with QDOS.
Saying FAT sucks is like saying Minix (the file system) sucks. They're both old, and better file systems supercede them. The only problem is that Microsoft decided to use FAT and extended it for Windows 9x, but that's somewhat understandable from a compatibility standpoint.
You guys laugh now, but keep your eyes on the prize.
/. about port-knocking and it occurred to me that there should be a an OPEN-SOURCE/EFF style Patent Attorney Leauge dedicated to preserving Innovations that come from the Open-Source Community.
I recently saw a thread here on
We're paying BIG BUCKS for litigation attorneys in a DEFENSIVE role in protecting Open-Source / Free IP; why not take an offensive stance? The EFF should partition a portion of it's income (or otherwise hire some IP attorneys) for the purpose of protecting free IP.
Organizations CAN obtain patents in the same way that Corporations can. As such, we should FIRST push innovation through a valid legal representative (the EFF comes to mind), and ask that they help Patent or otherwise "secure" the Intellectual Property. When the patents are granted, it will provide the open-source community with OFFENSIVE rights against companies like MSFT, et al.
Why should we sit back and play "catch up" with the great industry marketers and non-innovators? We need to organize, re-group, appropriate resources and act like an adult - not a group of children chanting about things we believe in but aren't willing to back up.
I know it might sound counter-intuitive to not get coolness-points by having your idea/project "slashdotted", but ultimately I think it will help the greater good to have our IP reviewed by a legit IP attorney (represented by the EFF or other org that is in our best interests) before posting it publicly (and INVALIDATING OUR VERY OWN Intellectual Property by demonstrating PRIOR ART).
Why do we continue to post great ideas publicly and not preserve the rights to those ideas?
Why do we continue to bitch about how we're getting FSCK'ed by the big corporations?
I'll tell you why - it's because WE (the innovators) are giving our Ideas and Intellectual Property to the big corporations. We're handing it over to them on a silver platter. A perfect example can be found with the TCP/IP stack that IS Microsoft Windows 95-XP... That code is undeniably *BSD CODE!
While I see no problems with the BSD licenses, I do see a problem when a company like MSFT that has the resources to buy a massive amount of Patents and the Open-Source community sits back and waits for the fallout.
Do you guys not see the big picture? They can't beat us in the marketplace. They CAN beat us using legislation / regulation / lobbying / etc.
Here's the bottom line:
IF YOU REALLY BELIEVE IN FREE/OPEN SOURCE - WE HAVE TO BE PRO-ACTIVE - _NOT_ RE-ACTIVE.
Software Patents suck - but they are the new reality. We need to either beat them or join them.
Since WE'RE the origination point of the vast majority of thier "innovation", I say we beat them at their own game.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
It's a huge change, and in the long run I would predict it would chill innovation in the US, lead to more draconian NDAs & Non-Compete agreements, aid the big guys in consoladating IP to be used against the market more than each other, encourage more secrecy, less patenting, more espionage, and possibly give rise to a preference to patent inventions in other countries. If I had played a lot more Elevator Action, I might see this as a positive development.
:)
Well, the way things are now, if you're not a big corp, you can't afford to innovate in many areas. You have nothing to bargain with (no patent portfolio to cross-license), so the big boys can simply trample you with lawsuits if you seem like even a minor threat to them. There are such a huge number of vague, broad, and obvious patents that they can probably find a million and one things that are somewhat similar to some aspect of your invention or process. So yeah, maybe your scenario actually would be an improvement. But then again, I played a lot of Elevator Action, so that may have warped my view
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
How can a workaround/extension of a filesystem to implement a feature that was in other filesystems for decades be not obvious? Despite what this AC might think, long filenames weren't invented by Microsoft.
Playing catch-up with the competition and implementing their features is the most obvious thing you can do.
This blind Microsoft loyality is really amazing. I don't say that Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to get ideas from others, everybody does it - but getting a patent for an extension for a feature the competition had decades before? That's just ridiculous.
Obvously, everyone here thinks that its the job of the USPTO to examine patent applications, and investigate whether they are "novel, feasible, and non-obvious". This ceased to be the case long ago: Their job is to earn money. No one has ever successfully sued them for granting patents on trivia. This has created a loophole where the govt can make money by granting a patent to almost anything submitted, in return for a fee.
Even a case where the USPTO is found liable for gross failure of duty, and fined an amount commensuate with its takings, would not stop this stupidness - just because someone has been able to argue that one instance is trivia does not create a precedent for arguing that something else is trivia. Even if M$ lose this case, it will have no impact whatever on the real problem - that the USPTO exists as a profit centre for the government, and not as a service to the US tax payer.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
That's the most ridiculous post I've ever read on Slashdot. It's probably a troll; I mean, the majority of your sentences are coherent, but there's just no logic from sentence to sentence. I imagine you like this guy, only with foam coming out of his mouth as well. But I'll respond anyway.
You claim that Microsoft keeps stealing our ideas, that if they didn't have their patents, but we had patents, we'd win in the marketplace. Or something like that. It's not really clear. But allow me to refute that anyway. Look at GNOME. Look at Mono. Look at KDE. Now look at Microsoft Windows. Who is innovating, again? Who is copying who? And don't give me that crap about the BSD TCP/IP stack. Whether or not Microsoft "stole it," I'd hardly say that the TCP/IP stack is the "vast majority of [Microsoft's] 'innovation'". Whether or not you like their products, you'd have to be foolish to claim that all their good ideas came from open source software.
It sounds like what you're calling for is a GPL for patents. I'm not sure how you'd word it. You can't sell products using this patent unless you release the source code under the GPL? Something like that? Get a clue. Not everyone likes the GPL. BSD folk will want to release code using your patents. Mozilla will want to include your new algorithms and whatnot. People such as myself will want to put code using your patents in the public domain. Oh, but too bad. We should extend the GPL virus.
And if you meant that instead we should licence the patent to anyone, what's the point of paying the fees? You might as well just publish your software and not worry about paperwork. You'll have established prior art for the future by doing so. After all, patents are relatively easy to knock down with obvious prior art. It's the "obvious" part that's tough to claim.
But let's say that we still think patents will help the open source community. Let's say that we manage to come up with some innovative idea and we patent it. Let's say Microsoft really wants/needs this technology. What will we gain? Microsoft has the funds to buy us off fairly easily. They also have the funds to get the patent invalidated without much hassle. But the small business software writer does not. He just can't use our technology. So he suffers, and Microsoft wins the day again. Who have we helped, again?
No, patents for open source ideas is a horrible idea. It would merely make writing software more difficult for everyone, and especially for non-GPL fans. It would delay the development of open source software, hurting one of the key benefits of open source -- fast turnaround and constant development. And in the end, it would solve nothing.
How did your post get a +5?
What with? Luncheon vouchers? If the Open Source community *does* fund lawyers to use Microsoft, MS have the money to keep on throwing lawyers at us ad infinitum. Yes, some lawyers take on pro bono cases. But there are limits.
As a group, we are a lot of people, we could have a powerful loud voice. But it's unlikely we will ever be rich.
Remember, politicians are in the minority and only there because they were voted there. If we can become sufficiently organised as to explain these issues to Joe Voter, we shall be more powerful than any amount of $$$//.
Who's with me? Mail me and I'll post back with numbers.
PUBPAT submitted previously unseen prior art
I mean, who writes this shit?
Especially since the patent covers the *idea* not the *expression*. Therefor, the fact you could not see the source code has no bearing on the fact that you can *see* what it is doing (the implementation of the *idea*).
I hope PUBPAT highlight this.
I wholeheartedly agree with the idea that we must "beat them at their own game".
In fact, I suggested something very similar less than a week ago.
I even mailed around an initiative based on this idea to a couple of prominent people in the Open-Source/Free-Software world.
I received a response from Richard Stallman.
He mentioned having considered something like a defensive patent foundation before, to come to the conclusion that it would cost [b]a lot of money[/b] to gain patents, and even more money to enforce them.
Still, I am convined that if enough people would be to join such a foundation, we would still have enough clout to make a difference.
If, like me, you're serious about such an initiative, then please contact me at buison01@REMOVEALLTHECAPITALLETTERSie.hva.nl
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
t's a huge change, and in the long run I would predict it would chill innovation in the US,
yup just like software piracy has cause a almost stoppage in new software, and music trading has decimated the record industry...
In fact, I remember hearing that someone using that same argument against the printing press....
and Argh said the same thing to Ogg about that damned wheel of his... it will destroy the dragging industry in the village...
If your company can not adjust to change then you deserve to be put out of business when a minor change like this comes along.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Not really. Patenting things just makes lawyers richer. The best way to fight patents is to publish your ideas and make sure that prior art is well established.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
That would help Microsoft, not hinder them. They're own of the few companies around that can afford to ruthlessly persue every single patent infringement, real or perceived, no matter how trivial. Smaller organisations would suffer as they would lose a patent when they couldn't persue a minor infringement because of the legal costs.
Decode these
If people actually read the patents, then 90% of the patent stories here would never get posted here.
This is a discussion site. Discussions involving facts are usually much shorter and less interesting than those involving paranoia, Big Brother, and the quest of everyone in a management position to take over the world.
Slashdot wouldn't be popular if it weren't dumbed down.
LibreSociety.org Manifesto Version 1.5.4 -- David M. Berry & Giles Moss A constellation of interests is now seeking to increase its ownership and control of creativity. They tell us that they require new laws and rights that will allow them to control concepts and ideas and protect them from exploitation. They say that this will enrich our lives, create new products and safeguard the possibility of future prosperity. But this is a disaster for creativity, whose health depends on an ongoing, free and open conversation between ideas from the past and the present. -- In response, we wish to defend the idea of a creative field of concepts and ideas that are free from ownership. 1. Profit has a new object of affection. Indeed, profiteers now shamelessly proclaim to be the true friend of creativity and the creative. Everywhere, they declare, "We support and protect concepts and ideas. Creativity is our business and it is safe in our hands. We are the true friends of creativity!" 2. Not content with declarations of friendship, the profiteers are eager to put into practice their fondness for creativity as well. "Actions speak louder than words" in capitalist culture. To display their affection, profiteers use legal mechanisms, namely intellectual property law, to watch over concepts and ideas and to protect them from those who seek to misuse them. While we are dead to the world at night, they are busily stockpiling intellectual property at an astonishing rate. More and more, the creative sphere is being brought under their exclusive control. 3. The fact that the profiteers are now so protective of creativity, and jealously seek to control concepts and ideas, ought to rouse suspicion. While they may claim to be the true friends of creativity, we know that friendship is not the same as dependency. It is very different to say, "I'm your true friend because I need you", than to say, "I need you because I'm your true friend". But how are we to settle this issue? How do we distinguish the true friend from the false one? In any relationship between friends we should ask, "Are both partners mutually benefiting?" 4. The profiteers' insatiable thirst for profit clearly benefits from their new friendship with the creative. Through their use of intellectual property law - in the form of copyright, patents and trademarks - concepts and ideas can be transformed into commodities that are controlled and owned. An artificial scarcity can then be established. But, unlike physical objects, concepts and ideas can be shared, copied and reused without diminishment. No matter how many people use and interpret a particular concept, the creators' use of that concept is not surrendered or reduced. But, much money is to be made when creative flows of knowledge and ideas become scarce products to be traded in the market place. Thus increasingly, intellectual property law is providing profiteers with vast accumulations of wealth. Indeed, immaterial labour (based on information, knowledge and communication) has now replaced industrial manufacture as the main producer of wealth in the age of technological capitalism. As such, the relationship codified in intellectual property law between creativity and profit can be seen as a core element of this wider structural transformation of the productive processes. 5. For many of us, the thought of intellectual property law still evokes romantic apparitions of a solitary artist or writer seeking to safeguard his or her creative work. It is therefore unsurprising that we tend to view intellectual property law as something that defends the rights and interests of the creative. Perhaps, in some removed and distant time, there was a modest respect in this specious notion. But this romantic vision of the creative is certainly ill at ease with capitalist 'reality'. Creators have become employees and each concept and idea they produce is appropriated and owned by the employer. Profiteers are using intellectual property law to amass the creative output of their employees and others. What is more, they continuall
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
System designers really have to start thinking farther and farther ahead. For example - most modern desktop motherboards still have 3-4G memory limits - my older ones have 768M limits even though I have ram chips in hand that could bring that up to a gig if the MB could handle it. In 10 years from now, I can see NV memory modules that could hold 500G
I agree with you, but there are probably things that we aren't considering. When designing a circuit/processor/motherboard/whatever for both speed and efficiency, you need to set design paramaters that are reasonable for the motherboard's percieved lifetime (generally 2-3 years I would guess). If you make a motherboard with today's technology that supports 500GB of RAM, there are going to have to be significant tradeoffs with speed and other things for that support. It is hard to design hardware that is so open ended.
Although it would be nice, I don't think it's practical/cost-efficient.
//FIXME: Bad
God, it's like I'm trying to teach Marlee Matlin how to talk over the internet.
FAT, or rather the various inventions that make it up have been patented at one time or another, many having entered the public domain. Microsoft's inventions are rather narrow in scope having to do with file attributes and long file names being saved esentially as linked metadata crammed where it doesn't belong. Rather than patenting all mouse traps using springs to crush and suffocate mice, they made a few tweaks to the design of the spring. They are now not asking people to either discontinue use of all mouse traps using springs, only that people selling devices which make use of their particular flavor of mouse traps pay them a quarter per device up to one quarter megadollar, people who wish to assemble such mouse traps in their garage are still free to do so.
Their invention was modest, and perhaps even less than elegant, and so is what they're asking. Let's be clear. They're not even telling flash memory makers to not use FAT for flash. In fact they have no basis from which to make such a request. Rather they are saying, if you want to use FAT, please by all means, but if you're using our inventions in your implimentation, we'd like a modest consideration.
It would seem you've little understanding for the wide minutia of what is patentable, and a grossly overly broad idea of what is obvious. To even greviously injure your tortured straw-man oil example. I could invent an adative for oil to make it easier to use with hinges. And in fact such things are common in the extreme. You should know better. The fact that you don't speaks for you and your education in a way words never could.
While I agree with you that the theory is that you can't patent an idea, patents in the business process space have been so broad as to effectively allow patents on ideas. Not in this particular case, but do you recall when British Telegraph decided it owned the concept of the hyperlink? Or when a encyclopedia company (blanking on which one, google failed me) decided it owned the concept of a computer based encyclopedia (probably a desperate attempt to lock a market that has reduced multi thousand dollar encylopedia sets to a few hundred dollars for paper, and $50 for a CD). One click shopping (patenting the *concept* of storing data, not the actual implementation: if it was implementation, someone would have reimplemented via new methods in a hartbeat). Heck, there is the guy who is chasing people for presenting pictures of products on a site that allows purchase of those products.
While in this case they are not claming a overly broad area, to say "You CANNOT patent an idea" seems to overlook the fact the patent office seems perfectly willing to issue such patents. A more accurate statement is "You can patent just about anything, but overly broad patents may be struck down at great expense".
Sig under construction since 1998.
Hardly...You know blind devotion to the principle that everything that benefits Corporate America(TM) is good thing is not the same thing as favoring capitolism or laissez-faire economics or libertarianism or whatever you presumably identify yourself as? When the government steps in and takes an active role in helping corporations advance their goals at the expense of society, they're not supporting a free economy. You want the government all the way out of the business of redistributing wealth? Fine..I can respect that opinion even if I disagree with it, but at least have the balls to be consistant and advocate banning the entire patent system, whose sole justification for existance is the concept of 'benefiting society.'
Microsoft does not use a lookup table. It interleaves the long filename into the directory as a series of "invalid" directory entries that are ignored by older DOS versions. There is no "actual" short filename in the Microsoft implementation either: the long filename directory entry points directly to the first cluster without lookup via the short filename. So this patent does not qualify as prior art.
Patents are not about ideas but about reduction to practice.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Everyone complaining about the 8.3 limitations of the original FAT filesystem, please remember, this was a product that came out in 1981, which ran on a 4.7MHz 8-bit CPU with as little as 16KB of memory, and was used with 160KB floppy disks. Sure, by 2004 design standards the FAT design is poor, but in those days where every bit of performance was necessary, the design compromises are a little easier to understand.
(Also