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Microsoft running on FAT reserves? Or fumes?
Feb. 26, 2009

If by suing TomTom, Microsoft wins the right to charge for ubiquitous FAT filesystem features like long filenames and flash wear-leveling, it could spell real trouble for Linux device makers. Not to mention SAMBA distributors. OTOH, decades of non-enforcement are going make tough sailing for Redmond legal on this one.

Microsoft announced the suit today. The suit against Linux devicemaker TomTom alleges three FAT-related infringements, along with five related to proprietary user-space applications.

The five user-space suits may well have merit. We suspect the FAT-related suits were just thrown in for FUD value, though.

Microsoft has little chance of enforcing any patents it may have related to FAT, because for decades, the company found it quite convenient to let FAT become the "lingua franca" for all kinds of removable storage media, from floppy disks to USB keys to the SD cards that let TomTom users transport map data between their PCs and their in-car navigation devices. It's sort of like the whole GIF thing. A company can't just sit idly by, and let its patents go unenforced for years, and then clamp down. This sort of "bait-and-switch" tactic gets no respect in the American legal system, and rightly so. It didn't fly too well in Germany, either.

It seems to me that Microsoft would never have stooped to this kind of thing in the proud days of Bill Gates. I mean really. Microsoft is not usually mentioned in the same sentence as, say, Unisys, or CA, or pre-Macromedia Adobe. If the day has come when Microsoft has to start looking to its patent portfolio as a revenue source, the company could be hurting worse than anyone yet realizes.



-- Henry Kingman


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