RE: Federal Patent Court declares FAT patent of Microsoft nulland void

["Larry Seltzer" <Larry () larryseltzer com>]

I'm skeptical of most software patents, but Microsoft's implementation
of long file names on FAT volumes is pretty clever, solved a real
problem and was superior to and different from alternatives proposed at
the time. 

The article is a little unclear on the basis for invalidating the
patent, but I think it's saying that the court found it obvious. That's
a bad interpretation because there were several parallel efforts to
implement long file names on FAT (such as in OS/2) and they were all
different and inferior. 

Larry Seltzer
eWEEK.com Security Center Editor
http://security.eweek.com/
http://blog.eweek.com/blogs/larry%5Fseltzer/
Contributing Editor, PC Magazine
larryseltzer () ziffdavis com 

-----Original Message-----
From: funsec-bounces () linuxbox org [mailto:funsec-bounces () linuxbox org]
On Behalf Of TheGesus
Sent: Friday, March 02, 2007 11:48 AM
To: FunSec LList
Subject: [funsec] Federal Patent Court declares FAT patent of Microsoft
nulland void

Don't get all excited... it's Germany....



The Federal Patent Court has declared a Microsoft patent on the file
allocation system File Allocation Table (FAT) invalid for the Federal
Republic of Germany. The claim in question is the protection claim
granted by the European Patent Office under EP 0618540 for a "common
namespace for long and short filenames." This in turn is based on the US
patent No. 5,758,352. At the German Patent and Trade Mark Office
(GPTO) the patent is protected under DE 69429378. According to a
recently published decision (PDF file) by the 2nd Division of the
Federal Patent Court bearing the file number: 2Ni 2/05 (EU) and dated
October 26, 2006 the claims made are "not based on inventive activity."

more here...

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/86141
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