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?"

Comments

Patenting mistakes

[alain94040]

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?

Re:Patenting mistakes

[Computershack]

Tomtom does indeed use FAT on the memory cards the maps are stored on.

Re:Patenting mistakes

[poetmatt]

Not really, it's been widely debated that the FAT patent would not hold up on a review....so I wouldn't be so jumpy.

Re:Patenting mistakes

[interstellar_donkey]

I think it's a little more simple than that.

1) Is it technology related?
2) Does it work?
3) Does it work better than what we can do?

If you've answered yes to the above questions, Microsoft has the right to sue you.

Re:Patenting mistakes

[lorenlal]

From Wikipedia (cause I'm lazy): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table

Microsoft has recently secured patents for VFAT and FAT32 (but not the original FAT). Despite two earlier rulings against them, Microsoft prevailed and was awarded the patents.

If TomTom uses FAT (12 or 16), then they're in the clear... Unless they're specifically using the VFAT extension.

Re:Patenting mistakes

[MikeBabcock]

A Darwin award? For using FAT? Like every camera maker on the market? And every DVD player with memory card slots? And TVs that have them for that matter? Not to mention stereo systems with USB plugs.

FAT is ubiquitous for flash storage.

Re:Patenting mistakes

[Cylix]

They've been suing over FAT implementations for years so this one isn't new per say.

Which is funny because it promotes interoperability for windows and doesn't require some funky file system.

If you don't want to pay the microsoft tax... use ext2 and put some cycles into making sure the windows ext2 driver is working well.

Linux cannot be stopped...

[Lead Butthead]

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.

TomTom not exactly a historically good actor...

[morganew]

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.

Re:TomTom not exactly a historically good actor...

[ianare]

They don't seem any worse than any other corporation.

Looking at the EULA, it's really only the US version that has a lot of the typical bullshit, the European versions are much saner. Can't really blame them for doing the same things all other companies operating in the US are allowed to do.

And from the gpl-violations page (which was resolved in a friendly manner) :

As part of the agreement, TomTom will show it's appreciation of the Free Software and technology enthusiast movement by making a significant donation to the Chaos Computer Club (http://www.ccc.de/).

So they may not be exactly saintly, but don't seem overtly evil ... and compared to Microsoft ? Come on !!

Re:FAT32 patents

[Fastolfe]

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.

Re:The right answer to this

[quantum bit]

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.

Re:The 3 patents

[JK_the_Slacker]

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.

Re:The right answer to this

[saleenS281]

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.

Those patent numbers

[gringer]

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.

Re:FAT32 patents

[nabsltd]

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.