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"obviously duplicated" is irrelevant"obviously duplicated" is irrelevantPosted Jun 30, 2009 2:35 UTC (Tue) by JesseW (guest, #41816)In reply to: VFAT patent avoidance and patent workarounds by ianw Parent article: VFAT patent avoidance and patent workarounds
In a patent context, it doesn't matter whether two pieces of code are "obvious duplications" of one another -- what matters is if one piece of code implements something which is claimed in the patent. So there is no discussion of "excuses" -- it's all about what does this code do, and what does the patent claim, and are they the same. That's the question. And if the claim is a way to make a long and short name for the same file, and that patch causes the kernel not to do that, then they are not the same. No "excuse", "lame" or otherwise, is necessary.
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"obviously duplicated" is irrelevant Posted Jun 30, 2009 18:28 UTC (Tue) by ianw (subscriber, #20143) [Link]
I realise the issue is not duplication here, but how could a reasonable person not just roll their eyes and sigh if two lawyers were standing in-front of you duking it out over how completely different their VFAT implementations are (or not) because it slips though a loophole that somehow escaped the prolix that is a software patent.
I completely blame Microsoft, however. By forcing the TomTom issue they showed intent. If the best they can come up with is to sue over a file format vaguely more complicated than what we expect undergraduate students to implement to pass a basic operating systems course, then they are justifiably doomed.
"obviously duplicated" is irrelevant Posted Jun 30, 2009 21:06 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Have you *seen* VFAT? If an undergraduate student implemented something
that ugly he'd get a C, max.
(Of course, nobody wanted it to be so ugly. VFAT is the way it is because
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