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German Court Invalidates Microsoft FAT Patent
walterbyrd sends this news from Techworld:
"A Microsoft storage patent that was used to get a sales ban on products from Google-owned Motorola Mobility in Germany has been invalidated by the German Federal Patent Court. Microsoft's FAT (File Allocation Table) patent, which concerns a 'common name space for long and short filenames' was invalidated on Thursday, a spokeswoman for the Federal Patent Court said in an email Friday. She could not give the exact reasons for the court's decision before the written judicial decision is released, which will take a few weeks."
Does this ruling cover FAT32 or just FAT16
There goes Microsofts Android extortion profits...
There should be a way to get a refund if you paid license fees for an invalid patent. Anyone have a guess as to how much money Microsoft has made off this patent?
...that is at least in Germany. Google never wanted to pay any licensing fees. It's been Google's modus operandi for years.
I assume the agreements made often don't allow for demanding refunds.
Why? Was the product defective? Was something illegal done? Bernie Madoff's customers deserve restitution. Microsoft's do not. Whether or not the patent is valid, you pay to license the filesystem. Caveat emptor. If you didn't think the patent was valid, you should ahead and used it without paying. The payments amount to 'insurance' money to avoid expensive lawsuits. Which is fine until someone with some balls and money says bullshit and is willing to go to court and challenge it.
No, there really shouldn't be, that would be worse than the current situation. That would mean that to go after any infringers at all would be financial Russian roulette, no matter how valid the patent may be.
I'm confused, you are saying this as like if that should be a bad thing?
Okay, lets get this right, you think that it is a bad idea that suing people to stop them doing things is financial Russian roulette. Your proposed solution is to leave the situation where merely developing software is financial Russian roulette. You wouldn't be a lawyer by any chance?
No, there really shouldn't be, that would be worse than the current situation. That would mean that to go after any infringers at all would be financial Russian roulette, no matter how valid the patent may be.
You say this like it is a bad thing, this is how civil court works if you think you have a claim you pay to file the suit and pay for your attorney with no guarantee the judge or jury will find your claims valid. Why should patent cases be any different?
Why? Was the product defective? Was something illegal done? Bernie Madoff's customers deserve restitution. Microsoft's do not. Whether or not the patent is valid, you pay to license the filesystem.
You would be right if modern patent licensing wasn't a legalized protection racket. The patent is invalid so there was never a product to begin with, only a bunch of men dressed in expensive suits telling you "that is a nice business you have there. It would be a shame if something happened to it, either pay up or face years of curt battles with sales bans mixed in". The nearest thing to a product is the promise not to loose your business to a violent death.
I thought file formats were not patentable anyway. And why hasn't this expired yet?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Patent validity shouldn't be random. The patent office should be examining them properly. If you start suing people over your patents you should be sure that you've checked prior art, etc. Many of them patents are obviously bogus but because there's no real penalty for extracting licensing fees for them patent trolling is a viable business.
One of the important requirements for a patentable invention is that it must be "useful".
This patent originally covered a way to provide compatibility between short and long file names. But nobody has used short file names in decades.
So now, the "feature" continues to be necessary only so that FAT can provide compatibility with itself. That's like begging the question. The feature no longer has any intrinsic usefulness, and in fact just serves to make the file system format more convoluted and less efficient.
The patent system ought to be changed so that any patent should be revoked once it is no longer useful for its intended purpose. This particular patent has recently been "useful" solely as a way to give Microsoft leverage in the media device market. The covered feature provides zero benefit to end users.
automatically formatting non exfat volumes >32G as exfat is actually conforming to the spec.
Reformatting a card with data in a foreign file system causes data loss. Which section allows data loss without the user's confirmation to conform?
The practical problem with "forcing users into uploading everything into Google cloud" is that carriers limit uploads and downloads per month to Google cloud. A lot of people would rather purchase an SD card one time than pay the carrier every month to have access to a larger library while away from Wi-Fi.
But nobody has used short file names in decades.
In VFAT, the long file names are interleaved with the counterpart to inodes under UNIX. Each inode contains an 11-byte short file name, and these must be unique within a directory.
So now, the "feature" continues to be necessary only so that FAT can provide compatibility with itself. That's like begging the question.
It's to provide interoperability with the billions of other devices using FAT. How is a network effect necessarily begging the question?
^ this is modded a 3? WTF. It's pretty stupid and not related in any way to the topic. It's not even funny. It was a complete waste of my time to follow that link. As a service to others... just don't
Microsoft lost to German Engineering!
I'd rather do business with Germany thant with the neo-facist regime in the USA.
Now how does that sound?
The reality (which may come as a surprise to Americans reading this), Germany today is far more liberal and deomcratic that the USA ever was. At least you can have a good time at the Oktoberfest. That just wouldn't be allowed in puritan USA.
I've lived and worked in both countries and I know for sure which I'd rather live in if I had to choose and the answer is not the USA. Modern USA is closer to facist Germany than ever. All in the interest of National Security you understand but ... oh shit why bother. The US has its collective head in the sand going Na-na-na-na-na-na I can't see you.
Just don't mention the war!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
They can't patent FAT! I have prior art - I have been sitting on my couch eating junk food for 20 years.
We have a drug for that.
INB4 an analogy between using Microsoft products and eating junk food as a lifestyle choice.
Have gnu, will travel.
It's all Americans at Oktoberfest anyway.
FAR16 vs FAT32 vs NTFS has been computer talk since the 1990's. Get off our lawn!
Thanks for the comment. I was about to make one like it myself.
FAT has been there since the 1980s, as a part of DOS itself
You forgot HPFS
Forget the Slashdot editor.
Does the Slashdot poster read to the end the stories he cites?
The expected appeal will be interesting because the same senate of the BPatG had previously invalidated it but the BGH then reversed that decision. A reversal may happen again. Despite my longstanding opposition to software patents I have to say, just to be realistic, that this patent is far from finished. Counsel for Microsoft argued today that a finding of nullity for a lack of technicity by the BPatG would be inconsistent with the aforementioned April 2010 ruling by the BGH, paragraphs 31 and 32 of which stated that the patented invention met the technicity criteria under Article 52 of the European Patent Convention, the article in European patent law that prohibits patents on computer programs "as such".
This is not about how much they make, but how little the others make.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Legalized protection racket? So, if you develop something that could earn you tons of money, would YOU not want to protect that to gain some financial consideration for your efforts?
Several years later it finally keeled over, taking down its bald rider with it. Yeehaah!
GPL 3 rocks!
The problem is that corporations who payed for a fake-patent license cannot sue the patent office for not doing due diligence, because the payer is not part of the 'contract' between Microsoft and the patent office for the patent.
However if a court would indeed make Microsoft refund the corporations for this fake-patent, then Microsoft does have the choice to sue the patent office for letting a fake-patent be rubber stamped.
Hopefully this will cause the patent office to do their job better.
Probably he would, but one of the problems with software patents is that it *is* a protection racket as long as it legal to effectively say "Nice business you got there, too bad I know someone - not saying who, who got something - not saying what, who want a piece of the action or we *will* make sure you lose money through the courts: fight a protracted battle for millions and perhaps win, or pay us a modest sum and we'll go away.. your pick".
If you might have read anything: The courts have found that Microsoft failed to invent anything of relevance. Yet in the last two decades they made money from extorting businesses using a bunch of men dressed in expensive suits (lawyers) and that now worthless 22 page long document. They did not provide a service, they did not invent/develop or create anything, all the money they received was paid to keep the lawyers away. If that is not the very definition of an extortion racket then I don't know what it is.
would YOU not want to protect that to gain some financial consideration for your efforts?
You could maybe try to sell your software. It might even make you a lot of money without involving lawyers. I hear people actually make money of selling things and providing something of value to their customers instead of going around destroying a thriving industry by waving around some pieces of rubber stamped paper.
Also if you failed to notice people got into the trouble to use FAT because Microsoft made boatloads of money from the top product using it and interacting with the defacto standard OS has been a requirement. So it is not as if Microsoft has not been compensated millions of times for the work they put in to fix the flaws of their software.
Which one? WW II, Gulf War 2, Gulf War 3, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Korea?
It's more like, "I see you're using our technology in your product, let's talk". That the patents in question are not only available under RAND but also that it's no secret that Microsoft tech was used in these products, completely invalidates your extortion fantasy.
You don't want to license patents, then don't use tech that you know full well is patented. It's neither nefarious for complicated.
So how would one go about breaking the network effect of FAT if, say, existing business-critical devices rely on a particular patented file system?
Shut up, moron. Extortion is not acceptable, in any way, shape or form. Calling it "protection" doesn't change anything nor does it make you anything other than a johnny-came-late. The mob did that decades ago.
Imagine you buy a new iPod. You get home and open the box and there's nothing inside but an artist's rendering of an iPod. That's what happened to anyone in Germany that licensed the 'patent' in TFA. I use quoted since apparently it wasn't actually a patent at all.
How is that worse? At least the plaintiffs have the ability to opt out of the mess, defendants do not. I would up the ante a bit more and require that the fees be paid back with interest and that if the holder should have known the patent was invalid they pay back triple.
When you go around shaking people down for money, you better be damned sure it is owed to you.
What would be better is if the US patent office had to repay the royalties (or perhaps a percentage of them). Then there would actually be incentive for them to be careful about the patents they approved. As it is, they get money for any patent they approve, and no negative consequences for approving patents which are later overturned.
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
Microsoft could just argue that licensees knew the patents were bullshit when they signed the deals.
In seriousness, the "secret" NDA'd terms of the agreements include a lot of off-smelling shit, and nobody has a deal where money in exchange for FAT is the full extent of the agreement.
What about the fact that the patents in question "available under RAND" are actually useless pieces of paper and are here only thanks to spray-and-pray method of applications filing and patent approval?
Mentionning the war to a German these days just gets you a major eye roll. They'll keep talking to you (especially if they have something to sell), but you'll be classified under the "dumb guy who can't understand it was three generations ago" category.
The Berlin wall came down a generation ago.
Maybe the US and UK have to grow up about being the winners of that WW2 thing.
The money is already mixed with other assets. That means it is not available even through courts.
Please just go fuck yourself instead of posting. You are not funny in any universe.
There is a simple way around it. Sell some model of phones without firmware at all or with some primitive firmware with limited functionality but not covered with patents. And supply it with an URL of source code that you can compile yourself. If at least some of routers take this model (they use OpenWRT) and (in Russia - with FreeDOS) with computers - why it cannot be done with phones?
See also: http://neo900.org/#main
Well, the problem is that when you go to the shop and demand a refund, the shop owner points you to the sales contract you signed, and where somewhere in the fine print it is written: "Should the box turn out not to contain an actual iPod, th buyer is not eligible for a refund.".
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Will it play Doom?
Not only would it be difficult to overturn in court, it would also be embarrassing to admit they were snookered.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
And then you sue and the judge rules that unconscionable and awards you a refund. Meanwhile he's pissed off at the shop and looks for an excuse to award damages.
Contracts can't just make any arbitrary thing binding.
not really surprising that Microsoft managed to get a mandate in for preformatting usb flash in xFAT as well, given that they're on the USB Flash Drive Alliance...
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Yes, I am. If you've got a valid patent, and hundreds of licensees, you wouldn't be able to go after one infringer, just on the off chance that you get a crazy judge and have to pay back the licensees before you even get the chance to appeal.
It is rather incomprehensible that /. keeps on quoting F*SSpatents, even though it is known that this site is created by a well-known Microsoft/Oracle/anyone-else-who-cares-to-pay-him shill. There will be plenty of readers here who don't realise that everything written there should be taken with a ton of salt while half of what he writes is patently untrue or taken out of context in the first place.
Quoting F*SSpatents on patent issues is like quoting McDonalds on healthy eating habits or deBeers on the real value of diamonds. Maybe a warning could be added for the unwary?
'-SLASHDOT WARNS THAT READING F*SSPATENTS IS KNOWN TO CAUSE TEMPORAL DISTORTION OF TRUTH-'
--frank[at]unternet.org
If the courts take a different view I can assure you it will be made available.
You would be right if modern patent licensing wasn't a legalized protection racket. The patent is invalid so there was never a product to begin with, only a bunch of men dressed in expensive suits telling you "that is a nice business you have there. It would be a shame if something happened to it, either pay up or face years of curt battles with sales bans mixed in". The nearest thing to a product is the promise not to loose your business to a violent death.
I wish that were true. Typically, lawyers don't do "curt".
And which one you think was between the two mentioned countries, smart ass?
True, but as a general rule you'll find that while there are certain rights that consumers cannot sign away in a contract, the same protections do not apply to B2B contracts.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Sovereign immunity. You'll probably find the government has not waived immunity for the actions of the patent office, so you could not sue it.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Would it help if I held my index finger under my nose and did the John Cleese walk... Because that's what most of the Germans I know will do when someone mentions the war. Partially because it's part of the Fawlty Towers sketch and because use of humour gets the whole thing out of the way.
Not that humour is well known German trait, but they can borrow a bit from across the channel.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
,,,,Bad-toothed Brit detected... See, I can use stereotypes too!
That is in general true. That doesn't alter the fact that the 'licensee' should be due a refund if the patent is ruled invalid, particularly in cases where there is a compulsive element to the original agreement (for example, if it is a settlement to avoid court or a court award).
To get my data to Google I have to pay for the electricity used by the phone. All my other costs are fixed
Your costs won't be so fixed once you start incurring overages on your data plan.
Yup. I was only addressing the statement that "contracts can't make any arbitrary thing binding" which is a bit less cut and dried when neither party to the contract is a consumer.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Overages? On an unlimited data plan?
Unlimited data plans? In Slashdot's home country? It's less likely than you think.
They sold it as unlimited, and it is.
What country and what carrier are you on?
In part that's because the issue hasn't been tried (AFAIK). The consumer protections are based in law on the imbalance of power and the compulsory nature of B2C contracts. Those elements might be found to exist in some B2B patent licensing deals as well.
s/US patent office/US tax payers
I don't often call "Idiot" on things, but let's be honest... Who would end up paying the price for your idea? Joe Patent Clerk? His bosses? Department budget? At the end of the day, it all falls on the taxpayers/consumers. Rework your idea so that patent clerks and management actually lose their jobs. Or perhaps even better - the patent holders face /real/ fines. But then, those ideas just introduce a host of new problems.