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OIN Posts Details of Microsoft's Anti-Tom Tom Patents
number6x writes "LinuxDevices.com is reporting that the Open Invention Network has posted the details of three of the eight patents used by Microsoft in the Tom Tom suit (which Tom Tom settled last month), asking the community for prior art. These patents cover aspects of the FAT file system. You can find them on Post-Issue.org — see numbers 5579517, 5758352, and 6256642. OIN CEO Keith Bergelt believes that these three patents are of tenuous validity and will probably not survive a review. Bergelt believes that there's a good chance that the USPTO may well invalidate them before the end of the year.
If a few lay-men webanaughts can find prior art in patents that were enough to force a company to settle out of court (for fear of legislation), then clearly the system is so completely broken that I fear it cannot be repaired.
Here is my question: Why should I spend the money that I get from my 9-5 job to start up a new company if a few lazy lawyers can bring me to court and sue me without having any real legal ground? I might as well not bring innovation to the stage and save myself the hassle.
Against a company with that many lawyers and the ability to litigate you to oblivion.
Perhaps because Tom Tom's business model involves building and selling GPS devices, and not fighting patent battles?
It becomes really easy to decide to settle such a lawsuit to keep management focused on "job 1", rather than focusing on saving a few pennies per unit by fighting a lawsuit for several years with a very well funded adversary.
The difference between a successful business and an unsuccessful business often comes down to the CEO's ability to make such a business decision without letting the "fairness" of the issue cloud the "business" of the issue. Get too involved in "I'm not going to let them bleed me for what may be an obvious patent with what could be some obliquely-related prior art", and you're not focusing on your core business.
And the worms ate into his brain.
I suppose TomTom's suits against Garmin and Toyota were filed because it gets too cold in the Netherlands and they wanted to spend some time in the Eastern District of Texas (their venue of choice when they sue others)?
"Perhaps because Tom Tom's business model involves building and selling GPS devices, and not fighting patent battles?" You might be right. And Microsoft's business model involves aggressively suing, acquiring and otherwise eliminating potential competition. They also make a half-assed effort to produce things. Guess who wins in the end.
That is exactly what the darkside hopes.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Well, not every tech company keeps a small fleet of Nazgul in their legal department.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
The CP/M file system. The original FAT12 file system was directly based on it and is nearly identical.
Better yet why does anyone make or sell anything in the US anymore, with all the bullshit legal restrictions they face. Why not move the company to China where there are essentially no IP laws?
No. They will probably be able to stop paying royalties going forward once the patent is held invalid, however; most contracts state royalty payments are only owed while the patent is valid.
Fixed it for you
There's no obvous links to the patents themselves but from their names I'd say they are about VFAT not FAT itself. VFAT is the kludge that allows long file names on FAT filesystems.
If FAT alone was the issue then it would be its own prior art because it was first used in the early '80s, its specifications were widely known well before 1990 and any patents would have expired by now.
These patents date from 1992 to 1995 so only have a few years to run, but long enough to incentivize a switch away from (V)FAT I hope.
While your post is true - and a method I am sure any legitimate company would want to go, the big difference is IBM can afford to spend millions on a lawsuit (and not bat an eye).
There lies a problem in our legal system. Often in cases like these, the company (or individual) with the least money (to spend on represenation) loses or gets forced to settle under unfavorable terms.
Microsoft has sued (in combination with other related activities) other companies out of existence in the past (Stac Electronics for one) - even when they were clearly in the wrong... maybe TomTom's route (no pun intended) was the best way for them.
Especially considering this is a market that Microsoft is showing interest in.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Yes. Just to make it clear. The patents do NOT cover:
1. Putting files on a disk
2. The FAT file system
3. Using "long" filenames to name files.
What the patents cover is a scheme by which long filenames are emulated on a FAT disk, which normally can only handle 8.3 filenames.
In addition the patents cover a bit of actual innovation. The obvious method of doing this is to make a hidden file containing the long filenames. Microsoft instead made hidden directory entries (a whole lot of them) containing the long filenames. This is likely to be the second, not first, thing somebody trying to do this would do, so it can be considered an innovation. The reason this works better is that old software ignored the hidden directory entries, not not actual hidden files, so when you deleted all the files with the old software the old software thought the directory really was empty.