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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.
I'm curious why TomTom wouldn't have done this work themselves to invalidate Microsoft's claims and avoid any sort of settlement? Couldn't they have stalled this until a determination was made that either the patent was invalid, or that their methods were based on the prior art - just like Microsoft's?
I'm hoping that TomTom just didnt do their homework and someone manages to come up with the info that they did not.
Makes me wonder how much luck this initiative will have - though I am hoping lots.
On another note, I wonder if an effort to invalidate the patents on the basis of "gee, that's obvious" is taking place as well...
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
It would be delightfully ironic if Microsoft's use of these patents to troll Tom Tom results in those same patents being invalidated.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
That is exactly what the darkside hopes.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
The best explanation I've read was in a reply to the story when Tom-Tom settled with MS.
Silly boy, there is clearly Prior Use of that here on Slashdot.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
The CP/M file system. The original FAT12 file system was directly based on it and is nearly identical.
Does TomTom get its money back when the patents are invalidated?
Since it was settled out of court, no. Not unless they manage to sue MS for bringing suit without merit or something.
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.
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.
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.