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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."
Was not Linux merely a hacked version of unix?
Yes, yes, I know they are not the same. But neither is 32mb and 2gb.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
Patents are intended to protect an "inventon" for a fix amount of time. In this case there are two very strong issues for why this patent should not be granted: 1) There is nothing novel or unique about the fat system (likely part of why it wasn't patented in the first place). There is simply no invention here, There is the particular locations of certain data structurs that are unique to fat, but that's not a standard, just a convention or, with the monopoly power of Microsoft, a standard. and 2) even if there were some invention here, it should be protected at the time it was released, Microsoft should no be allowed to wait 20 or more years and then patent the fat system well after thay see it is in comon use, and only because it is in comon use. The wheelbarrow has never been patented either, but that doesn't mean that someone should be able to patent it now.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
"but 14 chars, which is enough for most uses. "
You are absolutely correct, sir! And while we are at it 640 kB is enough for most uses, too...
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