Get APLawrence.com by RSSFAT Patent to be reexamined
Mon Jun 14 11:03:12 GMT 2004 FAT Patent to be reexamined
Link: US patent office to review FAT patent
Microsoft used FAT for years, but didn't bother to patent it until 1996. If it hadn't been for its use in things like digital cameras, they might never have patented it at all. The Public Patent Foundation is the force behind this. They aren't the only ones interested in fighting bad patents: EFF recently announced their Patent Busting Project.
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---January 3, 2005
Microsoft patented FAT long ago and the patent expired. The patent being re-examined by the USPTO basically has to do with the algorithm that maps long filenames to short filenames.
Even if M$'s patent were upheld it would only mean that unlicensed FAT32 implimentations could not use the same algorithm to generate short file names. They could acheive the same results with a different algorithm. OR they could just create 8.3 names that did nto match M$'s. Again this ONLT applies to creating the short name. It has absolutely nothing to do with understanding a shortname that was created on a licensed system. The converse is also true, if the shortname were created entirely differently, a properly implimented FAT32 system would still have to recognize it.
In otherwords, the patent is no significant impediment to anything.
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