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German Court Invalidates Microsoft FAT Patent

Posted by Soulskill on from the exercising-their-patent-rejection-muscles-to-get-rid-of-the-fat dept.

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."

20 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What about FAT32 by peppepz · · Score: 3, Informative

    The patent doesn't mention the width of FAT entries. It doesn't mention FAT at all, only directory entries.

  2. Well... there goes Microsofts Android ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There goes Microsofts Android extortion profits...

    1. Re:Well... there goes Microsofts Android ... by symbolset · · Score: 5, Informative

      The appropriate reference page.

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    2. Re:Well... there goes Microsofts Android ... by zlogic · · Score: 3, Interesting

      MS gets FAT32 royalties from pretty much every device with SD cards. GPS devices, MP3 players, TVs, digital cameras, car audio etc.
      Most "modern" Android devices don't have memory expansion slot (which sucks) and use ext4 internally. Most of the other MS patents taxing Android cover Exchange connectivity and that's unlikely to be invalidated soon.

    3. Re:Well... there goes Microsofts Android ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Why do we need MS filesystems at all? None of my USB sticks is FAT -- what a shitty filesystem.

      And who the fuck is connecting to exchange? How about removing the exchange connectivity and offering that via a paid app?

      Any other aspect of Android that Microsoft is fraudulently attempting to obtain patent taxes from?

  3. Re:What about FAT32 by queazocotal · · Score: 3, Informative

    As I understand it, exfat has been carefully designed to be rather patent laden, and rely on multiple patents - not just this one that is due to expire soon.

  4. Licensees should be able to recover their payments by putaro · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  5. Re:What about FAT32 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Every camera, phone and tablet manufacturer should use UDF to format flash cards. It's patent free and supported by all major operating systems. The only thing missing is write support in Windows XP, but it would cost Google pennies to write a free driver, compared to the billions they pay Microsoft for FAT patents.

  6. Expect Nexus phones to have SD cards... by bogaboga · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...that is at least in Germany. Google never wanted to pay any licensing fees. It's been Google's modus operandi for years.

    1. Re:Expect Nexus phones to have SD cards... by citizenr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Haha, you really think it was about patents and not about forcing users into uploading everything into Google cloud.

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    2. Re:Expect Nexus phones to have SD cards... by jonbryce · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes, that is what I am trying to say.

      In terms of actual EU courts, we have the EU General Court, but that only has competence to hear cases against the EU itself. For example, if the European Patent Office refuses to grant your patent application, you can go there to appeal your decision, or if the EU competition authority thinks you are behaving in an anti-competitive manner, you will face trial in that court.

      Most other cases involving EU law are heard in national courts, with the European Court of Justice as the final court of appeal. Generally speaking, judgements in national courts are binding only in that country, but persuasive elsewhere in the EU. ECJ judgements are binding in the whole of the EU. The exception is cases involving copyrights, patents, trademarks and registered designs (known as design patents in the US). For those cases, the national court sits as an EU court, and judgements are binding throughout the EU. Another exception is the EU small claims procedure, where consumers can take cases against suppliers in other EU countries in their local court, and the local court will work the the court local to the supplier to sort out the dispute. Small claims cases are not legally binding, but can be appealed to the European Court of Justice, who's judgements are legally binding.

  7. Re:What about FAT32 by jonbryce · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It covers long filename support in FAT. Digital cameras that stored photos with 8.3 filenames were never affected by this patent regardless of which version of FAT they used.

  8. Re:Licensees should be able to recover their payme by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  9. Re:Licensees should be able to recover their payme by putaro · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  10. Not useful by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Not useful by ledow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sorry, but you describe a useful function. Whether it's relevant any more or not is neither here nor there. If I invent a way to make a clockwork mechanism work more efficiently, that's still an invention, still patentable. And, as Trevor Bayliss shows, still something that should be protected by patents even if it's "old hat".

      The real crux of the matter is whether FAT is "obvious to one skilled in the art" which is a much, much, much more relevant and important test of patentability. Fact is, it pretty much is. If you're a filesystem designer and you're handed FAT and told to make it store long file names, FAT LFN's are pretty much one of a million ways to do them - and not even a particularly effective or perfect one.

      Lacking such "inventiveness", and being just something that anyone with half a brain could come up with, AND being in a jurisdiction where software patents shouldn't be allowed by the EU courts anyway, that's what means it should be invalidated. By the same token, BTW, Trevor Bayliss would also fail. What he did wasn't invention, just quite a smart combination of two existing technologies. But at least it was a physical invention and not a way to get Linux-based vendors (e.g. TomTom) to pay Microsoft money for Windows-only inventions.

  11. One-time vs. recurring fee by tepples · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  12. Re:Network effect by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 3

    The network effect is similar to begging the question.

    Something is popular because it's popular.

  13. Re: What about FAT32 by icebike · · Score: 3, Informative

    But it has never been standardised by any commitee.

    That's true only as long as you are willing to totally ignore the SD Association.
    This is one of those cases where the industry is way ahead of the so called "standards" organizations.

    The SD Association offers a formatter for SD/SDHC/SDXC cards but only for Windows and MAC. It may format a card in such a way that some devices can't use it.

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  14. Re:Licensees should be able to recover their payme by martyros · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

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