[plug] M$ to patent FAT and charge for it

James Devenish devenish at guild.uwa.edu.au
Fri Dec 5 16:56:55 WST 2003


In message <3FD045E4.2030604 at book-keepingnetwork.com.au>
on Fri, Dec 05, 2003 at 04:46:28PM +0800, Alex Polglaze wrote:
> You also can't disclose it before you patent it. You only have to tell or 
> show one person outside the developemnt group and it is no longer able to 
> patented.

Well, that's not strictly true in all places (at least not in
Australia). For example: provisional patents, grace periods, etc.

As for FAT...I haven't looked into this story, but if the patents only
cover the long-filenames system, how many FAT devices make use of that?
I haven't used any late-model digital cameras, but are they really using
long filenames? Is the filesystem complete when compiled without the
long-filesystem parts? When were the relevant patents issued?





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