Open Invention Network or LF? [LWN.net]

Open Invention Network or LF?

Posted Feb 26, 2009 19:29 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
In reply to: Open Invention Network or LF? by kragil
Parent article: Microsoft sues TomTom

The patents don't cover FAT, but VFAT (that is, the extension of FAT to allow filenames that don't fit the old 8.3 DOS naming restrictions).

FAT itself is so old (from the 1970s) that any patents (had there been any; you couldn't patent software in the US in the 1970s) would have expired long ago.

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Open Invention Network or LF?

Posted Feb 26, 2009 22:05 UTC (Thu) by kragil (subscriber, #34373) [Link]

OK sorry, sure. I meant VFAT.

But I really think it is time for the "nuclear option" and the OIN should retaliate. I can already see a lot of FUD on the web.

Sure it will be MAD,but in the end we will all be using Amigas again because the patent system will take down the industry as we know it ;)

Open Invention Network or LF?

Posted Feb 27, 2009 14:49 UTC (Fri) by forthy (guest, #1525) [Link]

Yes, IMHO this is the main reason something like OIN was created first hand. And Microsoft definitely should know that their action is a call for "nuke me". I'm sure they are vulnerable on the patent front, but if they want real war, they should worry a lot more: Conficker's writers are just a few criminal seeking for a botnet, they are not Linux hackers at war ;-).

The other front line of course is the US patent system. E.g. the FAT patent was disputed between 2004 and 2006, and finally, this completely bogus patent was reinstated. While in 2007, a German court ruled out that it is neither new (the Rock Ridge Extension to ISO CDs solves the same problem in the patented way before VFAT), and not an invention anyway (it does not go beyond common state of the art practice). If you have some contact with Obama's team, make clear to them that the current patent system in the US is stifling innovations, and that the solution is to at least ban all patents that were granted during the past decades, where the rules were so lax that every horseshit went through as novel "apparatus for attracting flies".