Microsoft aiming IBM-scale patent program at Linux? (Register)

Posted Dec 8, 2003 16:11 UTC (Mon) by vblum (subscriber, #1151) [Link]

It seems that the FAT implementation in the Linux kernel would have to fall under MS's patents - or is there some more subtle detail here?

Anyway, this is bad news - they are starting with legacy applications first, but this is a warning shot only.

Posted Dec 8, 2003 16:33 UTC (Mon) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link]

Microsoft is at risk on the security front. If enough people get fed up with security problems in Microsoft products, they might look seriously at alternatives such as Linux. This would badly impact their revenue stream.

In the past, I had the impression that Microsoft people weren't all that crazy about software patents, and were operating mainly in a defensive and/or exchange mode. But what would happen if the company started to really sink?

I have really cut back on my need to transfer files between Windows and Linux partitions on the same machine, but I'm starting to feel as if it might be a really good idea for GNU and other free-software supporters to get those Windows-side EXT2 and EXT3 file systems working...

...or for IBM to start working out some deals with Microsoft....

Posted Dec 8, 2003 18:05 UTC (Mon) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]

It will be easy to work around the FAT patents, for most uses. They only apply to creating (or renaming) files with long names. To copy files between MSWindows and our systems, we can just avoid the long names. Cameras don't create files with long names, they can easily stick to 8.3 names. Flash memory manufacturers can format the devices with no files on them at all, so they also are not affected. However, the vfat driver in the kernel might need to be pared down.

The bigger issue is what other patents MS has. Probably if IBM cuts a deal with MS, it will be that MS promises not to enforce anything against Linux, in any form. MS is likely to cheat by "encouraging" nominally-unrelated companies to attack Linux, just as they have bankrolled SCO.

Posted Dec 8, 2003 18:31 UTC (Mon) by hazelsct (guest, #3659) [Link]

I've suspected for years that Microsoft has been waiting for the EU to harmonize software patents, hopefully in their favor, before doing something like this. Then the EU, like the US, would be forced to either pay Microsoft to run all software (Windows, Linux, or anything else), or else reverse their previous legislation on patents, the latter of which is very hard to do. In the meantime, if they were to start enforcing first, then that would likely tip the European Parliament against them.

Perhaps they're starting to give up on the EU harmonizing in their favor, or have some dirty tricks to pull in the background to swing it the other way, or else (as the article suggests) they're so confident that they think people don't care.

In any case, this presents an opportunity to remind MEPs of the looming potential danger of such patents...

Posted Dec 8, 2003 18:48 UTC (Mon) by busterb (subscriber, #560) [Link]

Does anyone know if this patent would affect UMSDOS, a Linux FS that uses 8.3 FAT names and maps them to long, unix-compatible filenames along with unix file permissions using extra files to hold the meta-data. I know that ZipSlack and several other Linux-on-a-dos-partition distros use this method to install Linux without reparitioning. I don't know if UMSDOS uses any stuff from MS's long filename support.

Posted Dec 8, 2003 19:49 UTC (Mon) by josh_stern (guest, #4868) [Link]

As software developers, we frequently get outraged at the admin of
software patents by the USPTO
in part, because what is patented often seems like the sort of
trivial solutions to a given problem that developers would come to on
their own in their everyday work.

This is related to a general (and theoretically recognized) concern
about patents that they often do not strike a desired balance
between encouraging innovation (intended consequence of patent law) and
restricting competition (considered to be an unintended or necessary
evil part of the law).

But the importance of network externalities in modern technology
fields is related to a whole different type of theoretical problem
with patents that hasn't received enough attention. That is that
the value of a granted patent will often lie in its ability to
act as a gatekeeper for a technology standard rather than in any
intrinsic technological capability of what is patented. This
case of VFAT would appear to be a classic example of this. FAT
itself was a technologically backward filesystem even at the time
of its development in the 1980s. It is only significant because
of widespread use. Similarly, VFAT/FAT32 are only signficant
because of their standard use. Only Microsoft had the marketplace
capability to make any extension to FAT a standard. So allowing
a patent on this type of thing is simply a covert mechanism to
restrict competition and/or collect monopoly rents without any
element of encouraging technological innovation (arguably the patent
capability offers both incentive and mechanism to do the reverse).

Posted Dec 8, 2003 20:27 UTC (Mon) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

Since so many users here are asking about the patents in question and the the exact claims as voiced by Microsoft, let me just post this information. Maybe other users should do their research and post links rather than specualte and ask questions that can be answered by simply looking at the patents.

Microsoft: FAT File System Technology and Patent License
U.S. Patent #5,579,517
U.S. Patent #5,745,902
U.S. Patent #5,758,352
U.S. Patent #6,286,013

The first of those patents was granted November 26, 1996, years after UMSDOS was implemented in Linux.

Posted Dec 9, 2003 1:02 UTC (Tue) by foo@share-foo.com (guest, #7940) [Link]

Hopefully this will encourage the long needed legal reform here in the states. Or perhaps it will encourage a real monopoly busting court case that should have occurred half a decade ago.

Posted Dec 9, 2003 8:58 UTC (Tue) by Zelatrix (guest, #5163) [Link]

I thought that patent licensing was the responsibility of the user, not the developer (although usually developers obtain the patent licenses on the user's behalf). Wasn't that how users of Microsoft SQL Server - not Microsoft - got into difficulties when some aspect of SQL Server turned out to be in the scope of someone else's patent?

Given that anyone using the Linux FAT implementation will be doing so in order to interoperate with Windows, they already have a licence to use any patents in FAT. No?

I'm not a lawyer by the way.

Posted Dec 9, 2003 10:49 UTC (Tue) by dps (subscriber, #5725) [Link]

IANAL but have heard something about patents and copyright.
- Patents cover ideas and claiming you came up with it independlty out of pure woodsmoke are not defence.
- Copytights cover expressions of ideas. If I can prove I wrote my word for word indepentical novel independently on pure woodsmoke, you have no case. (In such an extreme exmaple really solid evidence of pure woodsmoke might be advisable).

Indeed you can copyright almost anything, for example some bits of german countryside (albeit bits that were being passed off as many places nowhere near germany).

Almost everywhere except the US *everything* patented and otherwise published is "obvious" and therefore can not be patented. AS such the 1990 articles would make the FAT patents impossible in EU even if you worked around the "not software" requirement---putting the algorithm or data format in a device or on an IC, for example (courts have held a licnce is required for software implementations of the alogrihtm on your patented IC).

There is a least one case of the US government and a large biotechnology company being denied a patent in the EU due to prior art. Somehow the prior art, which predated the US filing date by many years, failed to sink the US patent AFAIK.

In the US you can restrict the scope of "obvious" to things not published by yourself (but not exclude other people's comments on what you publish). This is why RSA was only ever patented in the US. The IDEA people did not publish prior to filing and did get both european and US patents.