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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."

5 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. 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.

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
  2. 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?

  3. 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.

  4. 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.