Microsoft's file system patent upheld (News.com) [LWN.net]

Microsoft's file system patent upheld (News.com)

Posted Jan 11, 2006 16:58 UTC (Wed) by Ross (subscriber, #4065)
In reply to: Microsoft's file system patent upheld (News.com) by rknop
Parent article: Microsoft's file system patent upheld (News.com)

FAT is close to 30 years old now. How can it be under patent?

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Microsoft's file system patent upheld (News.com)

Posted Jan 11, 2006 17:15 UTC (Wed) by AnswerGuy (subscriber, #1256) [Link]

I suspect that MS is trying to assert newer patent claims on some of the more recent changes to FAT, such as the innovation of using weird volume label directory entries as the long filename information. (That's how VFAT supports long filenames and links, by interlacing "volume labels" among the short filenanmes in the directories).

Those date back about 10 years now (ISTR they were first supported around Win '95 or so). That would give MS another 7 years to leach money out of companies like Lexar (and all your USB thumb drive, compact flash, and digitial camera manufacturers that use FAT ad their de facto standard FS.

The Linux community could capitalize on MS' greediness by helping to produce a set of libraries/DLLs and drivers/VXDs that provide MS Windows systems with access to ext2 or even Minix filesystems. These would be supported under Linux, of course --- but also freely available to the various manufacturers who could ship the community supplied and maintained drivers and libraries with their products to their customers.

JimD

Microsoft's file system patent upheld (News.com)

Posted Jan 11, 2006 17:32 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

Check the patent numbers and read the claims. All three of the patents are about long file names and the compatibility schemes to allow older systems to see mangled 8.3 filenames.

The older MS-DOS version of FAT is not patented; as you say, it's 30 years old.

Microsoft is being coy about the distinction, probably so they can collect from digital camera makers who can't possibly be infringing (because they use only 8.3 filenames like IMG_3031.JPG).

Patent reference

Posted Jan 12, 2006 16:27 UTC (Thu) by ayeomans (subscriber, #1848) [Link]

As far as I can tell from PubPat's challenge details there is only one patent in question, US-5,579,517. I guess the "two patents" refer to two of the four claims in this patent. The patent abstract states:

An operating system provides a common name space for both long filenames and short filenames. In this common namespace, a long filename and a short filename are provided for each file. Each file has a short filename directory entry and may have at least one long filename directory entry associated with it. The number of long filename directory entries that are associated with a file depends on the number of characters in the long filename of the file. The long filename directory entries are configured to minimize compatibility problems with existing installed program bases.

Patent reference

Posted Jan 12, 2006 16:37 UTC (Thu) by ayeomans (subscriber, #1848) [Link]

Microsoft's FAT technology license refers in addition to patent US-5,579,517 the two patents US-5,758,352 and US-6,286,013. All refer to long filenames. Though as far as I can tell (corrections welcome!) the latter two have not been challenged by PubPat or anyone else, so presumably are not part of the current ruling.

Microsoft's file system patent upheld (News.com)

Posted Jan 11, 2006 17:58 UTC (Wed) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

Ok, so this makes sense and it sounds more like what I had heard before. What they have patented is VFAT. So if someone created an algorithm that somehow worked with other VFAT implementations, but was useless on systems reading the names as 8.3, they would be able to get around the patent?

And for many companies, as the other poster points out, they can just avoid creating any long filenames (and only read the short names if ones are created elsewhere) and avoid the whole problem.

Microsoft's file system patent upheld (News.com)

Posted Jan 11, 2006 18:25 UTC (Wed) by HenrikH (guest, #31152) [Link]

You mean like this: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsd ?

Microsoft's file system patent upheld (News.com)

Posted Jan 12, 2006 1:17 UTC (Thu) by bk (guest, #25617) [Link]

That's fine, but I don't think pure hardware devices like thumb drives would be infringing. If the patents only cover long-filename creation or access, thumbdrives don't themselves create or use filenames, they simply export a block device.

Likewise, only the software portions of devices like digital cameras or music players would be subject to royalty or licensing fees.