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Has Microsoft's Patent War Against Linux Begun?
Glyn Moody writes "Microsoft has filed a suit against TomTom, 'alleging that the in-car navigation company's devices violate eight of its patents — including three that relate to TomTom's implementation of the Linux kernel.' What's interesting is that the intellectual property lawyer behind the move, Horacio Gutierrez, has just been promoted to the rank of corporate vice president at Microsoft. Is this his way of announcing that he intends going on the attack against Linux?"
3 patents relate to car navigation systems and I can't really tell who's right...
But patent 5579517 is very simple for all to understand: it's the infamous way of Windows 95 to offer long file names (32 characters) over DOS, which only allowed 8-character names.
So Microsoft patented the way to store a cross-reference between the nice, readable filename, and the ugly, DOS name.
Does Linux do that? Sure, there might be a FAT driver somewhere... But I hope TomTom doesn't use FAT. If so, Microsoft is abusing the patent process.
And am I the only one to see irony in the fact that Microsoft patented a software defect?
But its growth can be stunned. The lawsuits are not designed to stop Linux; a defendant with sufficiently deep pocket can fend off the attack, EVENTUALLY. The real intend of these suits are to stun the growth of Linux through FUD.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
TomTom were found to be a gpl violator in '04, sued Garmin in '07 and Toyota in '08 for infringing TomTom patents, and have a very restrictive EULA.
A sig?!? I don't think so.....
The only issue there is getting it to be supported on Windows. Grandma wants to plug her memory card/flash drive into any computer and have it "just work". If M$ doesn't give in and support the OSS FS, it'll be a tough battle.
USB flash drives are normally implemented as a USB disk, not a FAT32 "device", so the FAT32 implementation (and patent concerns) are pushed off to the host that reads/writes to the disk. Digital cameras and iPods could be considered hosts in that sense, and they probably already have FAT32 licensed.
Short filenames doesn't seem like a "Linux" issue to me since Linux doesn't do this. If Linux does have a driver that does this, then there may be some validity toward their claims. Perhaps that driver should be removed from Linux.
Linux's FAT32 driver does this. Removing the FAT32 driver would cause a lot of interoperability problems that would make Linux unsuitable for huge volumes of applications, e.g. accessing pictures stored on digital cameras (off the top of my head). TomTom needs this driver because they store the system on an SD card with the aim that systems can be upgraded/fixed by directly accessing the filesystem from a Windows PC, so they have to use either FAT32 or NTFS, and as Linux's support of NTFS is essentially a joke FAT32 is the only real option, therefore distributing a version without the offending driver compiled in is not an option for them.
I haven't tried plugging in a memory card formatted with ext2fs but does Windows prompt for a driver when it finds an unknown FS or simply ignore it?
No, it shows up as an unknown file system, and if you double click on the drive letter that it gets assigned, it "helpfully" offers to format it for you.
TomTom needs this driver because they store the system on an SD card with the aim that systems can be upgraded/fixed by directly accessing the filesystem from a Windows PC, so they have to use either FAT32 or NTFS, and as Linux's support of NTFS is essentially a joke
Linux's NTFS support is a joke? When did it stop working? I've been using it without problems for a couple of years now.
I'm waiting for a "-1 somepeoplejustshouldn'tgetmodprivileges" meta-moderation.
Blackmail? MS has been selling licenses for Fat32 for a LONG time. TomTom used the format very well knowing they were doing so illegally without paying a licensing fee. They were just hoping the patent will be invalidated like the FAT patent was. They lost the gamble and now it's time to pay up. Sad I get labeled a troll, but expected with all the zealots running around here.
From the shorter PDF:
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6175789.html — Vehicle computer system with open platform architecture
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7054745.html — Method and system for generating driving directions
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6704032.html — Methods and arrangements for interacting with controllable objects within a graphical user interface environment using various input mechanisms
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7117286.html — Portable computing device-integrated appliance
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6202008.html — Vehicle computer system with wireless internet connectivity
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5579517.html — Common name space for long and short filenames
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5758352.html — Common name space for long and short filenames
http://www.google.com/patents?id=02YIAAAAEBAJ&dq=6,256,642 — Method and system for file system management using a flash-erasable, programmable, read-only memory.
Some other text seems necessary in order to type stuff and get links in.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Yeah, but I'd watch for the Democrat-majority congress and along with the new Democrat administration to Bono-ize patent terms just as was done for copyright terms. If they'll do it for Disney, why not for the US' largest OS vendor Microsoft?
Because many other large corporations will also be adversely affected by extending patent terms. Also it's not just Democrats who extended copyrights, the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 was also called the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act after the artist/performer Sonny Bono who was a Republican. Also though a Democratic President, Bill Clinton, signed it the Republicans controlled congress. 55 Senators and 228 members of the House, a majority in both cases, were Republicans.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
"USB disk" has nothing to do with this. File system is property of the storage, not of the interface, be it USB, or SATA, or IDE. It is likely not implement as a USB disk to save cost, anyway.
Actually, from a quick read, those two patents appear to deal with stuffing long filenames into a file system originally designed only to support short filenames, in a backwards-compatible fashion. Linux's FAT implementation does do that, so that it can read and write FAT file systems with long names.
True. The problem for Microsoft though is that their fat32 method of "stuffing long filenames into a file system originally designed only to support short filenames" is obvious, and not innovative. At the time, there were many options available, and suggested to Microsoft, on how to do this, and Microsoft just chose one, and then patented it.
If put to the test in court, this patent won't pass the "obviousness" criteria. Also, since this is an interoperability function, it probably isn't patentable for that reason either. The order of arrangement of characters within a directory block on disk is purely a mathematical function, and in light of the Bilski decision, it is probably not valid for that reason also.
Finally ... there is voluminous prior art on the methods to structure information in filesystems. The IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin would surely have something to contribute to this topic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Technical_Disclosure_Bulletin
TomTom have a lot of possible defenses here. I wouldn't be surprised if the OIN and/or the Patent Commons chipped in some patents to help with a countersuit, if asked to do so.
Almost all of these were decidedly before 1989, or are direct evolution from things which were before 1989.
For example, GPS was first launched in 1989, therefore the design occurred before that. In fact the basic design was in Transit, which had it's first satellite launched in 1959.
Another example, Digital cameras are basically possible because of the CCD, which was invented in 1969, and the EEPROM, which was invented in 1983.
Third example, the first generation of cell phones were launched in Japan in 1979.
The BMW iDrive as well as Ford SYNC both run Windows Automotive.
20 years ago. That would be 1989.
*World Wide Web and everything it entails
Yep. Although all of the other major protocols we use already existed by then. Well, not Bittorrent.
*Global positioning system
First satellites were launched in 89.
*Digital Cameras
They existed well before 1989, though the first one on the market was in 1990.
*3D Graphics cards
Consumer 3D graphics cards, maybe, but I saw some amazing 3D stuff at Evans & Sutherland in 1987.
*Rewritable Optical Data Storage
Magneto-optical drives existed.
*Digital Audio (MP3/iPod)
Digital audio certainly existed, and even portable players -- e.g. the Sony Diskman was released in 1984. There were also computers playing and managing digital audio in 1989.
*Digital Video (DVD)
Yep. DVD came onto the market in 1994. Laserdisc already existed in 1989 (and had for over a decade) but it was analog video -- though sometimes with digital audio.
*Practical Cell Phones
The first cell phones came out in 1984. Mobile radio phones had existed for a couple of decades before that.
*Wireless Data
Umm, radio? I suppose you mean digital wireless... I'm still sure it was long before 1989.
*Mobile Computing
The first portable computer came about in the 70s, and the first laptop was released in 1982. The first palmtop/PDA devices were also released in the early 80s.
*Roomba
Can't argue with that earth-shattering advance.
*Instant Messaging
MULTICS had it in the 60s, BBSs did it in the early 80s, and I'm pretty sure AOL and Compuserve both provided it well before 1989.
To my knowledge the iPhone/iPod no longer uses FAT32.
I can't say anything about iPhones, but iPods can be plugged in to any Windows XP/Vista computer and be accessed as a plain old USB drive. In order for that to happen, they need to use FAT (of some variety), HPFS, or NTFS. If they are larger than 2GB, they must use FAT32, and to support long filenames, they have to use the VFAT variant.
Which means, they have to have a file system that is patented by Microsoft.
You can format an iPod using HFS+ on a Mac, but then it won't work with Windows until you re-format it.
Start charging for map updates? I've not hear of a single GPS with free map updates, except limited free updated in the event you bought the unit within like a month of a new update.
Otherwise the maps tend to cost at least half the price of the whole unit.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
I have a strong feeling that, were it a postscript printer, I would not have these issues.
Actually you probably would. Without proper (colour) calibration with both the screen and printer its not easy getting colours to "look" the same. Low end gear generally can't be calibrated without some cheating. You even need to take the lighting conditions into account. Also you can represent more colours on a printed sheet than you can on a monitor. But BW is easy to calibrate ;) .
My printer is a BW HP P1005 (without ps) and i run only slackware. The OS drivers worked better than the HP ones and its so fast to print from cold. I have already printed >10000 pages without a hitch. It cost only 80EU. Thats all good. For colour I take stuff to a copycenter. Top end gear for only about twice my printers per page cost. They are calibrated and let you preview on calibrated monitors. Its perfect. But then we don't do that much colour work really.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
ntfs-3g is the driver to use. I don't remember if they still have the big scary warnings but in the usual Linux trend it was probably to say "do no use this in a mission-critical setting!!!" in the early days, I've used it with write support for years and never experienced any data corruption. I did earlier experience a bug in that writing files past the 2GB (or was it 4GB?) limit on external disks would fail with error, but that's gone too. My read/write speeds are completely on par with Linux file systems though the CPU usage is a bit higher.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This isn't about Linux, this about MSFT purchase of TellMe and the deal they have going with Ford do to the same functionality that TomTom does. This is about eliminating the competition for in this market space, business as usual.