It's not all Maslenitsa for fat cats!
ZXNet echo conference «zxnet.pc»
Newsgroups: fido7.ru.embedded
From: George Shepelev
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 04 22:40:12 +0300
Subject: It's not all Maslenitsa for fat cats!
All, are you still sitting here?
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Microsoft's FAT Patent Invalidated
The United States Patent Office invalidated the copyright
certificate number 5579517, issued to Microsoft Corporation in 1996
and describing the FAT (File Allocation Table) file system.
The revision of the above patent was initiated in April of this year
at the request of the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT). Case
is that Microsoft was considering licensing the file
FAT systems for use in flash memory drives.
The estimated cost of royalties was either $0.25.
USA per each individual media, or up to 250 thousand dollars
to the manufacturer. According to PUBPAT, this policy of the software giant
makes it impossible to use FAT in open source products.
Consequently, Microsoft, hiding behind a patent, can unleash a dishonest
competition with the OpenSource community.
As a result, taking into account the arguments of PUBPAT, the US Patent Office
ruled that FAT technology is not patentable. However,the software giant has the opportunity to appeal the decision
first through the so-called “patent confirmation procedure”,
and then to the Supreme Court of the United States.
Computers + Programs
№11 2004
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Georgiy