Hi!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/15/fat_patent_review/
______________O\_/_________________________________\_/O______________
Patent Office asked to review Microsoft FAT patent
By [43]Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Published Thursday 15th April 2004 21:24б GMT
Microsoft's patent for the FAT file system - the basis for the
company's first salvo in its licensing offensive - is to be reviewed
by the US Patent Office, at the request of a free software group.
Microsoft introduced its first ever intellectual property licensing
program in December, having hired the senior IBM executive responsible
for building Big Blue's patent revenue stream from zero in 1985 into
what's now a billion dollar business, Marshall Phelps. Redmond calls
it "liberalization", and set the royalty payments relatively low for
its intended customers, such as camera manufacturers who use the FAT
file system for removable storage. But any royalty fee poses an
insurmountable obstacle for free software developers, the attorney
behind the request told us today.
"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.
Although the open source community has been transfixed by the SCO
case, Microsoft's threat is far more serious, as it seeks to make
distributing patent-encumbered free software illegal. If Microsoft
asserts more intellectual property claims under a royalty bearing
license, if these claims affect free software, and if Microsoft
chooses to uphold its rights and wins, then free software developers
would have little option but to stop work under existing open
licenses. That's a lot of ifs, but Microsoft has been unsuccessful in
impeding the growth of open source software so far, and has shown it
has both the means and motive. If successful, today's licenses would
eventually become a curious historical footnote for future computer
science students.
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."
The says that Microsoft's FAT patent (5,579, 517) is invalid because
of three prior art patents, filed by IBM and Xerox in 1988, 1989 and
1990. Microsoft was not granted '517 until 1996.
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. ╝
_____________________________________________________________________
O/~\ /~\O
-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials
Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of
GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system
administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id70&alloc_id638&op=click
_______________________________________________
Freedos-devel mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
