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| PubPat Files Request for Reconsideration of MS's Patent on the FAT File System |
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Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 03:57 PM EDT
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The Public Patent Foundation has some news for us. They just filed a formal request with the USPTO today, asking them to revoke Microsoft's patent on the FAT file system because, they say, it's causing significant public harm. "Microsoft is using its control over the interchange of digital media to aid
its ongoing effort to deter competition," the request states. With the request, they filed some prior art to demonstate that the patent was obvious and shouldn't have been granted in the first place. Interested to see what such a request for reconsideration looks like? They have it online, so we can learn. Just go to the page and click on the top PDF on the page, "REQUEST FOR EX PARTE REEXAMINATION OF A PATENT." The first paragraph says PubPat respectfully requests ex parte reexamination under 35 U.S.C. Sections 302-307 and 37 C.F.R. Section 1.510 of every claim of US Patent No. 5,579,517 issued Nov. 26, 1996 to Reynolds et al. ("'517 patent") and assigned to Microsoft Corporation "because they are all invalid under 35 U.S.C. Section 103 and their existence is causing significant public harm." On page 4, there is a chart, with what the patent is for on the left side and prior art showing the same thing being done on the right. If you'd like to read about patent law, Bitlaw has some information. Here's the referenced U.S.C. Section 302, which is the part about a request for reconsideration, and for the rest, 303-307, just click on "Next Section". Section 103, which is about a patent having to be non-obvious, is here. And 37 C.F.R. (Code of Federal Regulations) Section 1.510 is here. Here is the patent.
**********************************
PUBPAT CHALLENGES MICROSOFT PATENT TO PROTECT COMPETITION IN SOFTWARE
MARKETS Patent Office Shown New Evidence Proving FAT Technology was Obvious
NEW YORK -- The Public Patent Foundation filed a formal request with the
United States Patent and Trademark Office today to revoke Microsoft
Corporation's patent on the FAT File System, touted by Microsoft as being
"the ubiquitous format used for interchange of media between computers, and,
since the advent of inexpensive, removable flash memory, also between
digital devices." In its filing, PUBPAT submitted previously unseen prior
art showing the patent, which issued in November 1996 and is not otherwise
due to expire until 2013, was obvious and, as such, should have never been
granted.
"Microsoft is using its control over the interchange of digital media to aid
its ongoing effort to deter competition," states PUBPAT's Request for Ex
Partes Reexamination of U.S. Patent No. 5,579,517. "The '517 patent is
causing immeasurable injury to the public by serving as a tool to enlarge
Microsoft's monopoly while also preventing competition."
Last fall, Microsoft began to demand royalty bearing licenses for the entire
portfolio of patents around the FAT File System. However, the fact that
Microsoft has not offered licenses for use in Free and Open Source Software
has led some to speculate that Microsoft intends to use its patents to fight
the competitive threat posed by Free Software.
"We'd like to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt and believe that they
are not adopting a strategy of foreclosing competition through the use of
dubious patents," said Dan Ravicher, PUBPAT's Executive Director and
Founder. "Unfortunately, their past anticompetitive behavior combined with
their recent launch of a comprehensive patent assertion campaign causes us
to have serious concerns about their intentions."
Although PUBPAT's filing only directly deals with one patent, the fact that
it is the oldest of the patents in the FAT File System portfolio makes it
more likely that, once it is held invalid by the Patent Office, each of the
other patents will be viewed similarly.
"In the end, our beef is not with Microsoft per se," says Ravicher. "It's
with our broken patent system that is completely failing to ensure only
deserving patents get issued."
The Request for Reexamination can be found at
http://www.pubpat.org/Protecting.htm.
Contact:
Daniel Ravicher, Executive Director, Public Patent Foundation: 212-545-5337;
info@pubpat.org; www.pubpat.org.
About PUBPAT:
The Public Patent Foundation ("PUBPAT") is a not-for-profit legal services
organization working to protect the public from the harms caused by the
patent system. PUBPAT provides the general public, particularly those
persons or businesses otherwise deprived of access to the system governing
patents, with representation, advocacy, and education. To be kept informed
of PUBPAT News, subscribe to the PUBPAT News List by sending an email with
"subscribe" in the subject line to news-request@pubpat.org.
*******************************************
I asked Dan what happens next, and here is his reply:
"The Patent Office has three months to decide whether or not our filing
raises 'a substantial new question of patentability.' If they believe it
does, then they will order a reexamination of the patent. Microsoft can
submit an opening statement regarding the substantial new question, if they
want, to which PUBPAT is allowed a response. After that, or if Microsoft
doesn't file an opening statement, the reexamination begins and proceeds
according to the exact same process as regular examination of a patent
application, meaning that PUBPAT is excluded from any further correspondence
with the patent office about the matter." Andrew Orlowski has done a piece on this for The Register, and it includes this additional explanation: "'Free software is licensed in a way that prohibits royalties - you
can't pay Microsoft a license and distribute your software under a
free software license,' says Dan Ravicher, executive director of the
Public Patent Foundation which has filed the request to invalidate the
patent. . . .
"According to the Public Patent Foundation's request, 'the '517 patent
is causing immeasurable injury to the public by serving as a tool to
enlarge Microsoft's monopoly while also preventing competition from
Free Software.' 'Microsoft is using its control over the interchange
of digital media to aid its ongoing effort to deter competition from
Free and Open Source Software. Specifically, Microsoft does not offer
licenses to the '517 patent for use in Free Software. As such, the
'517 patent stands as a potential impediment to the development and
use of Free Software because Free Software users are denied the
ability to interchange media with machines or devices running
Microsoft owned or licensed software.' "Ravicher told The Register that he'd welcome a move by Microsoft to
license their portfolio for use in free software under reasonable
royalty-free terms."
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| Authored by: PJ on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 04:20 PM EDT |
| Please put corrections in this thread, so I can find them quickly. Thanks. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 04:37 PM EDT |
..anyone working on Microsoft's NZ XML patent?
That patent can be defeated on prior art, AFAIK at least
Abiword and KWord uses XML to save text in files, and
Gnumeric has used xml to save spread sheets for as long as
I have used Gnumeric. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 04:40 PM EDT |
Patent. n. Genius is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration. A patent is a tool
for doing 5% of the work and then sitting around waiting for someone else to do
the other 95% so you can sue them.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 04:46 PM EDT |
It would be nice to have Groklaw be yet another focal point for challenging
bogus patents. A thousand eyes and long memories do wonders for intentional
prior art non-research and minds closed to the most obvious notions.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: kberrien on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 04:46 PM EDT |
Is it me, or is the world just getting sick and tired of MS$ business practices.
This is a good thing, and what a way to make a statement about the patent
rewarding sitation! Perhaps this will slow down the MS patent war.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 04:53 PM EDT |
Thank you PubPat!
This is the first battle of what may be a very long (and important!) war.
May you have many wins!
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: DBLR on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 04:56 PM EDT |
If we use Darls thinking then the 517 Patent is a derivative of the other two as
they only added the word Prosser so as to mask prior art.
Charles
---
Some Lawyers are just like bananas, they are all crooked, yellow and slimy.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 04:58 PM EDT |
| PubPat is doing a terrific job. They deserve to win this one and I hope they do
win it. If they need donations I'd be happy to send them $.
But, as long
as software is patentable, we can win individual battles, but we will lose
the war.
Microsoft has got 50 billion dollars to spend on getting
patents and paying lawyers to defend them. Nobody else can spend any comparable
amount of money. Eventually, some of Microsoft's patents will be judged valid
(probably wrongly, but it doesn't matter), and we will be locked out of some
application area or interchange format or network protocol.
So, looking
ahead a few moves - we are in deep trouble. Ideas, anyone? [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 05:04 PM EDT |
Can someone please explain in simple English exactly what this patent covers?
From the quotes it seems like it covers the method of implementing long files
names.
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 05:19 PM EDT |
Maybe I am missing something here...but does it matter if MS owns this patent,
rightfully so or not?
People are are allowed to reverse engineer for compatibility reasons anyways.
There is nothing wrong with doing that.
I don't see an issue at all.
Or am I way off base.
taitbb[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: DannyB on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 05:54 PM EDT |
Can Microsoft get a patent on the following
invention?
Patent for a method and system for NOT buying
an upgrade when a vendor offers an upgrade for sale.
Whenever
someone doesn't buy an upgrade, they would be in violation of the
patent.---
The price of freedom is eternal litigation. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 05:58 PM EDT |
How long can a patent last for or indeed can be left
unpatented?
I
have CPM Plus floppies dated back to Oct 1985. On my old
Nascom II system, it
could read/write to many different
disk formats. For some while I happily
used the Nascom to
transfer files from various formats to/from the MSDOS FAT
formatted diskettes.
IIRC the reason that CPM+ could read/write so
easily
to
MSDOS Fat disks, was because FAT copied many of the
features
of the CPM filesystem.
Doesn't this also imply that CPM FS was "prior art"
to
FAT?
--Chriss
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 06:21 PM EDT |
I cant see PubPat winning this one, although it clearly deserves to for all our
sakes.
A public interest opposition comming from such 'Anti-Capitalists' (Communists
Heathens) is sure to go down well (not).
Had this been a company or a standards body then who-knows. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: jwrl on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 06:22 PM EDT |
When did M$ first market this technoligy and when did they apply for a patent?
As I remember, you only have 1 year to apply for the patent after making it
public (ie marketing it or other disclosure). [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 06:53 PM EDT |
It appears that WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS (5/31/91) had a Long Document Names
option which anticipated at least claim 3 in Microsoft's patent.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: crs17 on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 07:03 PM EDT |
I just read the patent and feel that many of us are talking about the wrong
thing. The patent does not cover the FAT file system - rather it covers the
VFAT long name convention and how that longer name is implemented within a FAT
infrastructure.
An explanation: FAT was the original DOS file system. It allowed for what are
now known as 8.3 filenames - names with 8 or less alphanumic characters followed
by a dot followed by three or less alphanumeric characters - no spaces and no
lower case letters. Besides alphanumberics, '~' (twiddle) was a legal
character along with '_','-' and some others. With Windows 95 (maybe rel 2) the
file name length expanded to its current length including spaces and the number
of dots being user-chosen. This second file system is known as VFAT.
What the patent covers is the mapping of VFAT into FAT. MS's goal was for a FAT
based (ie older) program to be able to read a VFAT (ie newer longer-name)
directory without having to alter or rewrite the older program. So MS defined a
mapping of VFAT into FAT and a VFAT directory contains within it a FAT directory
that an older program can read and differentiate files even if their names
differ only in the 32st (ie last) character.
(Irrelevant tech detail - the mapping is to take the first 6 legal FAT
claracters of the filename in question, append a '~' (twiddle) and then the
digit '1'. Follow this by the characters after the last dot if any. If there
are more than three characters after the last dot, truncate them.
If the filename derived in the last paragraph is already in use within this
directory, then increase the digit by 1 until you find an unused name. If the
digit exceeds 9 then truncated the filename prefix by one character and resume
the algorythm with the prefix ~10.)
It is this mapping that they are patenting. I wouldn't be too surprised if this
was an original algorythm and it is sort of clever, although not brilliant.
I'll take bets it definitely was not in the CPM file system, which was strictly
8.3.
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 07:19 PM EDT |
The Yamatsu stuff is probably enough to get the patent overturned. If not, they
could use ISO 9660 level 2 or level 3 (built upon level 1 in a very similar
fashion). For those who don't know, ISO 9660 describes the file system format
for data CDs.
It's too bad Digital Research (of CP/M fame) did not patent their OS API.
MS-DOS is a blatant rip-off of the same API. Yes I know Gates didn't write
MS-DOS, but he bought all the rights and licensed it to IBM.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: NZheretic on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 07:39 PM EDT |
| Umsdos is a linux file system. It provide an alternative to the EXT2
file-system. Its main goal is to achieve easier coexistence with Ms-DOS data by
sharing the same partition.
UMSDOS
Howto 2. UMSDOS: Where is it ?
2.1 Copyright
and License
This document is Copyright (c) 1995, Jacques Gelinas.
It
may be distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
You should have
received a copy with it. If not, you can view it
at
http://www.fsf.org/licenses/fdl.html.
2.2 History
The
Umsdos project was started in 1992 and made available
to the net in
January 1994 as a patch. It was included in the standard
kernel distribution in
July, starting with kernel 1.1.36.
Umsdos was early adopted in the
Slackware distribution
even before it was officially included in the
official kernel.
Umsdos was improved starting at kernel 1.1.60. Its
performance
has been dramatically enhanced, especially for writing. Since
1.1.70
(around this), it is stable again.
A major bug was solve in
Linux 1.2.2. This bug was causing
some grief to users since the
beginning (some file were
silently renamed, giving the sad impression that they
were
deleted). Beware that Slackware 2.2 is still shipping
release
1.2.1 of the kernel, so has this bug.
2.3 Availability
It is
available as a patch for kernel 1.0.x. It is built-in
for kernel 1.2. It can be
compiled in or load as a module.
Beware that for now, if you intend to load
umsdos as a module,
you must also use the Ms-DOS fs as a module. This
come from
a limitation in the module system (some symbols are only
export when
the drivers is installed as a module). [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 08:34 PM EDT |
Historical Note. FAT was created by MS programmer Marc McDonald when MS had a
contract with NCR to develop a disk version of BASIC for NCR's 8200 terminal. So
in the text below keep in mind that Marc McDonald was an MS employee when he
created FAT.
http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/100/200/300/allan_publishing/history_personal_compu
ter/
has an ebook (in PDF format), Chapter 6 is where I got the above information.
The following is from "Hard Drive Bill Gates and the Making of the
Microsoft Empire" by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. ISBN 0-88730-629-2
Published by Harper Business
First Harper Business Edition Published in 1993
From Pgs 121 - 122
"When Microsoft published the MS DOS Encyclopedia, the preface to this huge
technical manual credited Bill Gates for developing Stand-alone Disk BASIC. In
fact, the program was developed by Marc McDonald for National Cash Register in
1977. McDonald had since left the company, but when he read the preface he fired
off a blistering letter to Gates. "When I saw that in the DOS
Encyclopedia," McDonald recalled, "I said to myself, 'What is this
bullshit?' Bill knew damn well I did that." The Disk BASIC developed by
McDonald used a revolutionary file management technique known as the FAT, or
file allocation table. According to McDonald, Gates did not write any of the
code for Stand-alone Disk BASIC. It was much faster than the disk BASIC Gates
wrote for the Altair while holed up for five days at the Hilton Hotel in
Albuquerque."
FAT has been around a long time, and if Mr. Gates failed to apply for the
patent on it back in 1977 and it got into general use (aparently 86-QDOS (short
for 8086-Quick and Dirty Operating System) by Tim Patterson in Sept 1980 used
FAT.
Some more history, a condensation of other information in "Hard
Drive"
At the time 86-QDOS was written Tim Patterson (father of DOS) worked for
Seattle Computer Products. In the spring of 1979 Seattle Computer Products had
shown off their 8086 CPU board at the National Computing Conference and had
contacted Digital Research Inc. (DRI) to see about them making a 16 bit version
of CP/M for their new computer. DRI wanted a board to use in the development but
Seattle didn't have any to spare. Tim Patterson asked DRI when they could expect
16 bit CP/M to be ready and DRI told them December, remember this was 1979.
December came and went and no 16 bit CP/M was in sight, Patterson's patience was
wearing thin. Here they had a 16 bit computer (a board for an S-100 BUS system)
ready to go and no O/S for it. By April (of 1980) Patterson could wait no more
and so reverse engineered CP/M using the manuals. He did more than simply
reverse engineer it, he used a totally different file system as well (FAT). When
Q-DOS was finally up and running Patterson called Paul Allen and asked him if MS
would be interested in porting any of their software to this new O/S. This phone
call was the first time MS had heard of QDOS.
Before this fateful phone call MS, working with IBM under an NDA, and had
steered them to Digital research as the source for the O/S of the PC. IBM it
seems had wanted to use CP/M for their new machine from the onset and was not
aware that MS didn't own the rights to CP/M when they approached MS. DRI, as
history shows and as Gary Kildall has had to endure, dropped the ball when
negotiating with IBM and MS now had a computer for which they wanted to provide
languages and yet there was no operating system sight. Then the phone rang. In
September of 1980 Paul Allen called Rod Brock (owner of Seattle Computer
Products) and informed him that MS had an OEM who might be interested in
Seattle's operating system. Allen wanted to know if MS could act as the
licensing agent for Seattle's DOS. Brock said yes.
So, a Disk Operating System in general distribution in 1980 by Seattle Computer
Products for their 8086 computer, used the FAT file system, and MS LICENSED the
DOS from Seattle to provide it to IBM as MS DOS.
A little history on XENIX, also from "Hard Drive" Pg. 155;
In the spring of 1980 MS had a licence from AT&T for UNIX. They aquired
the licence in February of 1980 for a standard version of Unix and adapted the
OS for the new 16 bit computers. This was XENIX. Microsoft didn't even do any of
the porting of UNIX to these new processors. It hired a California company known
as Santa Cruz Operation to handle the job. SCO (now Tarentella) performed the
technical work and MS passed down part of the royalty money.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 09:11 PM EDT |
I stupidly erased all of today's email. If you sent me anything important, pls.
resend. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Jude on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 09:51 PM EDT |
| I was Googling for some info about the Patent Office, and I found this:
Dudas
statement
It's a statement given by Jon W. Dudas (Acting Under Secretary
of Commerce for Intellectual Property,
Director of the Patent and Trademark
Office) in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on counterfeiting
and IP
theft.
I thought it interesting that the Director of the USPTO devoted all of
his speech to the commercial value
of IP and the need for strict
enforcement. I got the distinct impression that Mr. Dudas thinks that
ensuring
profit is the only reason we have patents and copyrights.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Ted Powell on Thursday, April 15 2004 @ 10:02 PM EDT |
| Fortunately, the link isn't
very long, so maybe the software won't cut it in half.
The column as a whole
is about "how to compete with Microsoft".
...in every case, if we
look to the time when that competitor was causing the greatest grief for
Microsoft, it was when they were also paying no attention whatsoever to
Microsoft.
...
Google shows, just as Adobe did a decade before, that
companies CAN compete with Microsoft. But to do so they have to unlock the
intellectual talent of their employees and then USE that knowledge. Bringing
this story back where it started, I can't see where Sun is doing this. They do
not appear at present to have a culture that can grow the company beyond their
present business model. Sun's pricing and support of Star Office demonstrates
this point.
When a baseball team is losing, often the quickest and cheapest
thing to do is to replace the manager. That's what Sun has done. Jonathan
Schwartz is a very smart manager I'm sure. But his brain, no matter how big, is
no substitute for a culture that encourages innovation and growth. Sun needs to
regain that creative spark and I think they should use Microsoft's money to do
so. ...
An interesting piece.
Even more off-topic, but
potentially amusing:
Windows vs. Linux on the
Server and the Desktop,
by Jorge Lopez, MCSE.
---
his, her, its
..... not hi's, he'r, it's [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Daddio on Friday, April 16 2004 @ 12:03 AM EDT |
I have a dual boot system, and (to keep my wife happy) several fat32 parttions
that contain data that may be used/needed in both OS's
In the event that Microsoft were to have their pattent upheld and VFAT support
removed from the kernel, Windows and FAT32 partitions would be cleaned off my
machine faster than you can say "kernel upgrrade". sorry, Sweetheart,
microsoft didn't want to coexist with my OS. Welcome to Gnome 2 (I have already
introduced my spouse to Linux, but she's still more comfortable with MS)
Just as Microsoft extended their support for win98 to avoid tons of people
jumping to linux, I believe they will (if they are smart) leave well enough
alone where VFAT is concerned. i'm not the only customer they would lose. And
they don't want a mass migration.
---
Joshua A Clayton
~Salt Lake City UT[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: inode_buddha on Friday, April 16 2004 @ 01:20 AM EDT |
| This topic just showed up on slashdot, and one user there just put it all into a
nutshell, IMHO. One of those things where it's funny because it's so truthful.
In a twisted sort of way. Wait a minute... (Score:3, Funny)
by The
Master Control P (655590) on Friday April 16,
@12:50AM(#8878279)
(http://www.satirewire.com/news/0103/outlook.shtml)
The
ubiquitous format for exchanging mediums between computers? What about CD-ROMS?
*coughISO-9960cough*
It can't be a MS format, otherwise all my
Microsoft-approved CDs from 10+ years ago wouldn't work in my new Microsoft
CD-ROM drive with my Microsoft operating system. ---
"When we speak
of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price." -- Richard M.
Stallman [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: penfold on Friday, April 16 2004 @ 01:20 AM EDT |
I was watching the History Channel this past weekend and they had a show about
Smith & Wesson. (If anyone told me at the age of 16 that I would become a
junkie for the History Channel, I would have thought they were nuts... But hey,
I grew up.)
One of the things they mentioned was how Colt had patented
the cylinder that was fundamental to making revolvers. (Apparently, everything
was still muzzle-loading on a per shot basis up till then.) From the show,
apparently Wesson had his own version but it was too closely related to Colt's
Patent, so he could not market it until 1856 when Colt's patent expired. Going
by the information I found on the web, the
patent was good for about twenty years.
Granted, twenty years in the
computer industry is a lifetime, but I was wondering how patents have changed
since then and are they different when applied to
software?
---
Blood from a turnip? That's easy! Try getting SCOX
to produce evidence! [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Darkside on Friday, April 16 2004 @ 01:44 AM EDT |
| www.crn.com/sections/BreakingNews/dailyarchives.asp?ArticleID=49450 [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 16 2004 @ 04:51 AM EDT |
Replace IRS with IBM. :-)
http://cagle.slate.msn.com/news/Taxes/Moretaxes/images/IPipe/trever041201.jpg[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 16 2004 @ 05:56 AM EDT |
I agree with 'crs17', the MS patent is clearly not for the original FAT system
as such, the claims are for ways of handling the long filenames and relating
them to the short filenames.
The re-examination request has been submitted now, and I won't try to critique
its details, best of luck to them.
It may be worth drawing attention here to some general observations about the
patent re-examination system, which can be seen as far from ideal, in part
because it does not offer re-exam requesters anything like the same
opportunities to challenge a patent that they would have in court.
Re-examination is limited both procedurally and substantively in several ways,
and it has often been felt that re-examination is intrinsically biased towards
the patent holder.
There are now two statutory versions of patent re-examination, and the more
recently-introduced one of them is called 'inter-partes' re-examination, but
both of them look like strange procedural hybrids (neither of them really
corresponds to what used to be called 'ex-parte' proceedings, with only one
party, or 'inter partes', with at least two adverse parties).
For example, the re-examination proceeding requested for the MS patent is of the
original statutory type. In this version of the re-exam proceeding, as the
requester's attorney has stated, the requester gets its opportunity to put a
case for unpatentability, and it may also get an opportunity to put in a further
paper if the patent holder directly responds to the request for re-examination.
But after that -- nothing, once the re-examination begins, the requester gets no
further opportunity to participate. It could turn out that even if the patent
holder makes statements that are grossly incorrect, there is nothing the re-exam
requester can do within the proceedings to correct them. This, along with the
fact that the original examiner who issued the patent may also be assigned to
the re-examination, are two of the factors sometimes thought to favor the patent
holder unfairly in this process.
(The newer (so-called 'inter partes') version of re-examination imposes unusual
burdens on the requester and is sometimes looked on with disfavor for that
reason.)
Part of the problem with current Patent and Trademark Office procedures is not
only that some patents issue after inadequate search and examination, but also
that it is difficult to get correction of mistakes after they happen:
re-examination is supposed to be there for that purpose, but its procedural
defects mean that the purpose is sometimes not achieved.
In November 2003 the Federal Trade Commission issued a report entitled "To
Promote Innovation: The Proper Balance of Competition and Patent Law and
Policy". The FTC made recommendations for changes in patent law and
procedure, including an administrative court procedure for third parties to
challenge patent validity, plus a recommendation that the standards for
evaluating whether a patent is obvious should be tightened. It is a question
whether the FTC recommendations go far enough, but also another question whether
they will ever be adopted even as far as they go: I would suggest they do
deserve public and legislative support.
Meanwhile, I hope the current re-examination request succeeds, even with the
current procedural odds that some might judge to be stacked against it.
-wb-
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 16 2004 @ 11:25 AM EDT |
| See the Wikipedia article on "File
Allocation Table".
Here's a quote of some of its text, relating
to patent
licensing:
Although technical details of the FAT file system derive from
CP/M and have been widely known and widely disseminated in the PC community for
many years, and although the file system itself is widely considered to be
obsolete, it should be noted that in 2003 Microsoft made a point of asserting
intellectual property claims to the system. Citing patents, Microsoft claimed
that licensing fees are required for its use in such applications as removable
solid state media, and consumer devices using such media.
This claim by
Microsoft is controversial, for a number of reasons. Microsoft itself has
admitted that it developed its first FAT file system in 1976, so no patents
could apply to an implementation of the original version. Copyright law could
not prevent a re-implementation of FAT either.
Microsoft has cited 4
patents, dating from 1995 on, for FAT. All of these patents relate to storing
both long and short filenames in a single file system. A Slashdot discussion on
December 4, 2003, analyzed these patents and participants (particularly
Svartalf) reported the following:
* Patent 5,579,517 - Common name space for
long and short filenames. Filed for on April 24, 1995. This appears to only
impact someone using a Common Name Space for long and short filenames. This is
the scheme Microsoft deployed for "Chicago" (the codename of Windows 95 while in
development). This patent is likely to be invalidated (if challenged) by
Microsoft's prior art release of Chicago to the world in December 1993.
*
Patent 5,745,902 - Method and system for accessing a file using file names
having different file name formats. Filed for on July 6, 1992. This patents
allowing renaming of just the name and preserving the extension for the purposes
of keeping track of the filetype. It is unclear that other implementors would
need to implement this patent to implement a FAT system.
* Patent 5,758,352
- Common name space for long and short filenames. Filed on September 5, 1996.
This is extremely similar to the 5,579,517 Patent; see those comments.
*
Patent 6,286,013 - Method and system for providing a common name space for long
and short file names in an operating system. Filed on January 28, 1997. This is
a detailed description of how Windows 95/98/Me handles long filenames on an
x86-32 platform. It is unclear this patent would apply to anything other than an
exact clone of Windows 95/98/Me. This patent is likely to be invalidated (if
challenged) by Microsoft's prior art release of Windows 95, two years before the
filing date,
In addition, there also seems to be prior art for at least the
first, third, and fourth patents in the Rock Ridge Interchange Protocol standard
for UNIX, which was an IEEE draft specification on at least July 13th, 1993.
This protocol defined a method to support long and short names on the same media
(as well as additional information) to support Unix systems.
And of course,
there is the simple question if this is really an innovative idea at all.
Patents are supposed to be granted for new ideas; the notion of not removing
short names, but adding long name information as well, is an option that is
immediately obvious to any practitioner in the field.
In short, many have
concluded that these patents only cover implementations that include support for
long filenames, so it likely that removable solid state media and consumer
devices only using short names would be unaffected. Also, there is good reason
to believe the patents would be found invalid or unnecessary if challenged. In
particular, many or all such patents are believed by many to be invalid because
of previous public release, prior art, or because the technique would be obvious
to a practitioner.
None of this may impact operating system or firmware
implementations. In the document "Microsoft Extensible Firmware Initiative FAT
32 File System Specification, FAT: General Overview of On-Disk Format" by
Microsoft (version 1.03, December 6, 2000), Microsoft specifically grants a
number of rights, and many readers of that document have interpreted it as
permitting operating system vendors to implement FAT.
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 17 2004 @ 06:47 AM EDT |
Here is some more information concerning Microsoft and
LFN
rights.
- "Long Filename Specification, Version 0.5" is a PDF
document from
Microsoft dated December 4, 1992, and seems to describe the
LFN
implementation ideas sufficiently to cover all elements of the 517
patent.
In this version of the document, the LFN implementation is still
being referred
to as a "proposal." This document was distributed outside
of Microsoft (via the
Web), but I don't know when it was first
distributed outside of
Microsoft.
The copy of this version of the document that I have
contains a
"Microsoft agreement," which in turn contains in section 1 a
"Limited
covenant not to sue." Paragraph (d) of that section
says
"The covenant not to sue described above shall not
extend to your use
of any portion of the Specification for any purpose other
than (a) to
create portions of an operating system (i) only as necessary to
adapt
such operating system so that it can directly interact with a
firmware
implementation of the Extensible Firmware Initiative Specification
v.
1.0 ("EFI Specification"); (ii) only as necessary to emulate
an
implementation of the EFI Specification; and (b) to create
firmware,
applications, utilities and/or drivers that will be used and/or
licensed
for only the following purposes: (i) to install, repair and
maintain
hardware, firmware and portions of operating system software which
are
utilized in the boot process; (ii) to provide to an operating system
runtime
services that are specified in the EFI Specification; (iii) to
diagnose and
correct failures in the hardware, firmware or operating
system software; (iv) to
query for identification of a computer system
(whether by serial numbers, asset
tags, user or otherwise); (v) to
perform inventory of a computer system; and
(vi) to manufacture, install
and setup any hardware, firmware or operating
system software."
This paragraph seems to be retained and
carried unmodified into the
current version of the LFN documentation, which is
called "Microsoft
Extensible Firmware Initiative FAT32 File System
Specification, FAT:
General Overview of On-Disk Format, Version 1.03," which is
dated
December 6, 2000. Interestingly, in my copy of the 1992 document,
this
paragraph seems to be referring to the LFN document as the
"EFI
specification," even though the document as of the December 4, 1992
writing
was not titled the "EFI specification," but was rather titled
the "Long Filename
Specification." Hence, it would appear that an
agreement later created for the
"EFI specification, version 1.0" was
tacked on to the LFN specification at some
later time. Very likely,
earlier versions of the LFN specification either
contained no license or
contained some other license.
Version 1.02 of
the EFI specification, which is dated May 5, 1999,
does not include a
description of the LFN architecture, but does
acknowledge its existence the
following quote (page 21)
"This document totally ignores
the Long File Name architecture, and
only talks about short directory entries.
For a more complete
description of FAT directory structure, see the document
"FAT: Long Name
On-Media Format Specification".
So,
the FAT 32 and LFN documents were apparently combined into
version 1.03 of the
"EFI specification."
- Other sections of the "license" give recipients of
the document the
right to "reproduce the Specification solely for the purposes
of
creating portions of products which comply with the Specification
in
unmodified form" and also provides a "covenant not to sue under its
Necessary
Claims solely to make, have made, use, import, and directly
and indirectly,
offer to sell, sell and otherwise distribute
and dispose of portions of products
which comply with the Specification
in unmodified form." But then it goes on to
say that "Necessary Claims
does not include claims relating to semiconductor
manufacturing
technology or microprocessor circuits or claims not required to
be
infringed in complying with the Specification (even if in the same
patent as
Necessary Claims)."
My take upon all of this is, at the time the
license was written, the
Linux threat wasn't clear to Microsoft, and Microsoft
wanted to make the
LFN standard "open" enough to encourage adoption in areas
where gains
(in "synergy" of the standard) would outweigh losses (e.g.,
improved
marketabiliy of OS/2 or SunOS because they might support VFAT
-
Microsoft probably viewed these battles as already won). The
specific
exclusion of "semiconductor" and "microprocessor circuits" as
acceptable
uses would seem to indicate that they had in mind at the time that
they
would try to screw various kinds of hardware folks, as they are trying
to
do now. It would appear that they are not going after Linux at this
point only
because of including language in the license (not being
adequately aware of the
Linux threat at the time) which would make such
a suit somewhat
difficult.
This license is extremely tightly drawn, and it seems to me
that as
written, it could be used to screw some rather unsuspecting groups.
Even
though "operating system" access seems to be covered as a permitted
use,
many low-level utility functions such as defragmenters or
"Norton-like"
utilities don't seem to be covered under the permitted uses,
and
producers of such utilities are very likely at risk. As PJ has pointed
out
several times, the legal risks of ever dealing with the likes of
Microsoft
probably dwarfs any "indemnification" risks that might exist
in dealing with
open source. When read carefully, the license is an
excellent demonstration in
the the thinking of a company that goes out
of its way to preserve its right to
screw anyone that it wants to at any
time as might be useful in the coarse of
"business."
Wally Bass
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| Authored by: HMTKSteve on Sunday, April 18 2004 @ 11:08 AM EDT |
Correct me if I am wrong, but....
If they are licensing FAT to the people who
make the drives, how does that impact software that accesses those drives?
I'm
not focusing on the legality of the patent at all here. It just seems to me that
if a media company gets a license to use FAT on their media stick/drive/whatever
does the end user then need a license to access the FAT media that they have
legaly purchased?
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 25 2004 @ 05:33 PM EDT |
I had a Radio Shack TRS-80 computer in 1979. The file system (floppy drives)
was identical the MS FAT file system. RS used the term "granule"
instead of "cluster" to describe the basic allocation unit.
As I recall, the person who wroye TRS-80 for Radio Shack was named Randy
.......
prteacher[ Reply to This | # ]
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