Mike said:I wonder if they'll try a retrospective land grab? Claim that exFAT is
based on prior art, so they can extract licence fees for FAT too?
Wouldn't put anything past M$.
I gather exFat is part of Vista SP1
I've never seen a disk using it though.
Mike Ruskai said:You can't patent something based on prior art.
I don't think it'll catch on. I have a 500GB external disk here that
came originally fully formatted in FAT32. FAT32 can span these large
volumes, so I'm not sure why Microsoft is saying FAT32's maximum volume
size limit is only 32GB! Sure it's got the 4GB file size limit, but
that's never a major problem.
Yousuf Khan
(e-mail address removed) wrote
I don't think it'll catch on. I have a 500GB external disk here that
came originally fully formatted in FAT32. FAT32 can span these large
volumes, so I'm not sure why Microsoft is saying FAT32's maximum
volume size limit is only 32GB!
Sure it's got the 4GB file size limit, but that's never a major problem.
Even if it's your prior art?
Even if it's your prior art?
Rod said:Mike Tomlinson wrote
Yep, it you were stupid enough to not patent the prior art, you're ****ed.
You cant do it retrospectively that way.
Mike said:Patents apply to novel and non-obvious advances. If something is prior art,
it is ineligble for a patent.
Moreover, patents are only valid for 17 years. You can't refresh that by
making a minor change. You have to invent something new, even if it's
something that modifies an existing entity. That patent applies to the update
only, though, not the original entity.
Microsoft has no patents for FAT. All they have (four patents) are for VFAT
and FAT32, and they're quite questionable at that (no more valid than the
patent for a crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich). But they're enough
to extort money with, due to the wretched state of the US patent system these
days.
Rod Speed wrote
How about this:
(Yes, I know it was "teething problems" with a new patent system that was supposed to make the system faster, easier
and cheaper.)
Mike Ruskai wrote
Being ineligible for a patent has never stopped people applying for patents,
and has never stopped patent offices approving them (especially in the US, but not limited to them).
As long as companies are willing to pay license fees for unreasonable patents, rather than challenge them and get them
overturned, then "innovators"
are going to keep patenting obvious ideas with plenty of prior art.
MS excels at this (though they are not alone) - I would not be surprised if they can figure out a way to consider
exFAT patents as being relevant to older FAT versions.
Again, that applies only in theory, not in practice.
Some companies use such modifications as a way to extend the existing patents, contrary to the intentions of patents,
and to patent laws.
But as long as other companies would rather pay small license fees than large legal fees in a court room, such abuses
happen.
That's the key point. Theoretically, you can't patent a crustless
peanut butter and jelly sandwich - in practice you can,
and MS is one of the biggest abusers of the system (though they haven't often sued other companies).
MS are also experts at FUD and sowing confusion. You are entirely correct that MS has no patents for FAT - but "fat
patents" gives about a million hits in Google because people /think/ they have patents on FAT.
And as long as people are convinced of that, MS can continue to extort license fees (or other control) over other
companies.
Rod said:There is a theoretical problem with volumes bigger than 32GB.
Rod said:Yep.
Rod Speed wrote
Theoretical? FAT32? No,
Yep.
the specs supports much bigger drives than 32GB just fine.
Rod Speed wrote
You can download a copy of the FAT32 specs from Microsoft's website.
Try it.
Rod said:Irrelevant to what MS said about the problem with FAT32 partitions bigger than 32GB.
Rod Speed wrote
Irrelevant? Right.
And XP supports FAT32 partitions much larger than 32GB just fine.
The builtin formatting tool just won't format larger than 32.
Rod said:There is a theoretical problem with volumes bigger than 32GB.
Rod Speed wrote
And what's that theoretical problem?
Yousuf Khan wrote
MS claims its because many tasks on a very large FAT32 file system becomeslow and inefficient.http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/magazine/2006.07.windowsconfidenti...