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."
And my name is Rick James, bitchhhhhh
MY SECRET DIARIES
got posted earlier today... er... yesterday now I guess.
Karma: Negative (Mostly affected by dorm trolling)
Did anyone else read "PUBPAT" and instantly think pubic? What a name!
I wish Slashdot would stop posting stories like this, I don't know what to think when the evil Microsoft runs afoul of patents. Maybe the editors could put something in the summary so we wouldn't have to think these things through. I shudder at the mere suggestion of doing so!
thankyou!
Yeh. Totally obvious.
A lot of companies brand names have become nearly impossible to enforce because the trademark has made it into the accepted dialect of a language. Xerox, kleenex, and rollerblades are all examples of this. That's why Google was fighting, in court, to keep its name out of new dictionaries that are being published.
Just a point in case...
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it