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This page contains all of the posts and discussion on MemeStreams referencing the following web page: FAT File System Technology and Patent License. You can find discussions on MemeStreams as you surf the web, even if you aren't a MemeStreams member, using the Threads Bookmarklet.

FAT File System Technology and Patent License
by k at 9:59 am EST, Dec 4, 2003

well, i suppose we all saw this coming.

they want their quarter mil out of Apple, Diamond, Cannon, Samsung, Olympus, Phillips, SanDisk, Viking, etc, etc. etc.

my initial reaction was to flip out over this, but decided to do some research on the licenses for, say, HFS+, to make sure i'm not being unfair to microsoft. well, it turns out that apple's HFS+ implementation was made available under their APSL as part of the Darwin core. APSL looks to be fairly commercial friendly though IANAL... even so, Microsoft isn't likely to write a filesystem driver for HFS+ and then make the code available to the public as the APSL requires. I couln't find any details on commercial, proprietary licences.


 
RE: FAT File System Technology and Patent License
by bucy at 1:34 pm EST, Dec 4, 2003

If M$ pushes this too hard, it will make a big mess. Ideally, we'd end up with any of the open-source FSes (or a new lightweight one) except that you need a Windows driver for said FS. I know some people who've been involved in porting AFS to windows and at the time, it sounded like the license terms on the Windows FS SDK (which costs $10K or something) were essentially such that you couldn't redistribute code that you wrote against the API.


FAT File System Technology and Patent License
by Laughing Boy at 1:56 am EST, Dec 5, 2003

well, i suppose we all saw this coming.

they want their quarter mil out of Apple, Diamond, Cannon, Samsung, Olympus, Phillips, SanDisk, Viking, etc, etc. etc.

my initial reaction was to flip out over this, but decided to do some research on the licenses for, say, HFS+, to make sure i'm not being unfair to microsoft. well, it turns out that apple's HFS+ implementation was made available under their APSL as part of the Darwin core. APSL looks to be fairly commercial friendly though IANAL... even so, Microsoft isn't likely to write a filesystem driver for HFS+ and then make the code available to the public as the APSL requires. I couln't find any details on commercial, proprietary licences.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
I'm sorry... my BS-O-METER is buried in the red. This reminds me of the Unisys claim that they were suddenly owed royalties by every company that sold software supporting .GIF image files a couple years back. There really need to be laws in place that prevent this "patent squatting" from happening. OH SO convenient for a corporation like M$ or Unisys to bite their lip for X number of YEARS until something is adopted as an industry standard... THEN try to claim they are owed royalties by everyone and their mother? NO. You have a patent? Fine - then you best make dilligent efforts to ENFORCE your CLAIM to that patent from the time you apply for it - that means going after companies that adopt your technology and collecting royalties from the get-go. Let it slide for X amount of time without enforcing it? You lose ****ALL**** rights to your patent and it reverts to the public domain without warning. End of story.

LB


 
RE: FAT File System Technology and Patent License
by k at 11:02 am EST, Dec 5, 2003

Laughing Boy wrote:
] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
] I'm sorry... my BS-O-METER is buried in the red. This reminds
] me of the Unisys claim that they were suddenly owed royalties
] by every company that sold software supporting .GIF image
] files a couple years back. There really need to be laws in
] place that prevent this "patent squatting" from happening. OH
] SO convenient for a corporation like M$ or Unisys to bite
] their lip for X number of YEARS until something is adopted as
] an industry standard... THEN try to claim they are owed
] royalties by everyone and their mother? NO. You have a
] patent? Fine - then you best make dilligent efforts to
] ENFORCE your CLAIM to that patent from the time you apply for
] it - that means going after companies that adopt your
] technology and collecting royalties from the get-go. Let it
] slide for X amount of time without enforcing it? You lose
] ****ALL**** rights to your patent and it reverts to the public
] domain without warning. End of story.
]
] LB

you may have a point, though i'm sure a lawyer could give you one or two decent reasons why the system isn't set up that way (as trademarks are, i.e.). This is mitigated somewhat by the fact that patents are time limited (much more so than copyright if i recall, like, 20 years i think). FAT may well be coming up on it's expiration in a few years. I think the fundamental issue is that computer technology moves to fast to be fairly represented by the existing patent system. all the timeframes for information systems related works need to be multiplied by .3 or .4, so that these things re-enter the public domain while they're still useful.


 
RE: FAT File System Technology and Patent License
by bucy at 11:41 am EST, Dec 5, 2003

Laughing Boy wrote:

] I'm sorry... my BS-O-METER is buried in the red. This reminds
] me of the Unisys claim that they were suddenly owed royalties
] by every company that sold software supporting .GIF image
] files a couple years back. There really need to be laws in

Recall that this was a big deal at the time; e.g. open-source software couldn't support (creating) gif files without buying an LZW license from Unisys. The patent expired in the US in June and expires elsewhere next year; I'll blog details in a minute.


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