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Has Microsoft's Patent War Against Linux Begun?

Posted by timothy on from the begun-this-clone-war-has dept.

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?"

9 of 644 comments (clear)

  1. Patenting mistakes by alain94040 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?

    1. Re:Patenting mistakes by Computershack · · Score: 5, Informative

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

      --
      I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
    2. Re:Patenting mistakes by poetmatt · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    3. Re:Patenting mistakes by MikeBabcock · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      - Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
    4. Re:Patenting mistakes by Cylix · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      "You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
  2. TomTom not exactly a historically good actor... by morganew · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.....
  3. Re:FAT32 patents by Fastolfe · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. Those patent numbers by gringer · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  5. Re:FAT32 patents by nabsltd · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.