Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on February 22, 2007 07:14 PM
The FAT filesystem is an evolution of the CP/M filesystem. The first version, back in DOS 1, was extremely similar to the CP/M filesystem. Extra ideas, such as subdirectories, were borrowed from Unix and other operating systems and hacked in as DOS and then Windows evolved.
Furthermore, the basic data structures that make up FAT are trivial and clearly not patentable on the basis of prior art.
Trying to patent a specific implementation of a well known data structure is like buying a car, and then trying to patent the specific set of options you chose. You contribute nothing creative yourself, but you just might manage to convince the patent people otherwise.
FAT never was an original invention. It was never more than a set of obvious upgrades to existing technology. It's value has always been as a convenient well-supported standard only.
Tell me - did Microsoft ever pay for any of the ideas underlying FAT that it got from elsewhere?
Tell me - how come Microsoft thinks it has the right to earn money from other peoples implementations of other peoples ideas?
You might as well call Microsoft an IP thief for supporting other suites file formats in Office. This claim is equally invalid for exactly the same reasons - the file formats are just specific implementations of well known prior art.
A description of FAT (or of a particular file format) can be copyrighted, of course, as can any specific code to work with these data structures. But the file format itself is an abstract. The biggest danger is that your description or code can be considered a derivative work.
It's like the standards published by ISO and others. The copyright on the text of the standard is owned by ISO or whoever, but anyone can write a book about C, C++, or any other standardised field so long as they don't plagiarise anyone elses work.
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Re:how about FAT
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on February 22, 2007 07:14 PMFurthermore, the basic data structures that make up FAT are trivial and clearly not patentable on the basis of prior art.
Trying to patent a specific implementation of a well known data structure is like buying a car, and then trying to patent the specific set of options you chose. You contribute nothing creative yourself, but you just might manage to convince the patent people otherwise.
FAT never was an original invention. It was never more than a set of obvious upgrades to existing technology. It's value has always been as a convenient well-supported standard only.
Tell me - did Microsoft ever pay for any of the ideas underlying FAT that it got from elsewhere?
Tell me - how come Microsoft thinks it has the right to earn money from other peoples implementations of other peoples ideas?
You might as well call Microsoft an IP thief for supporting other suites file formats in Office. This claim is equally invalid for exactly the same reasons - the file formats are just specific implementations of well known prior art.
A description of FAT (or of a particular file format) can be copyrighted, of course, as can any specific code to work with these data structures. But the file format itself is an abstract. The biggest danger is that your description or code can be considered a derivative work.
It's like the standards published by ISO and others. The copyright on the text of the standard is owned by ISO or whoever, but anyone can write a book about C, C++, or any other standardised field so long as they don't plagiarise anyone elses work.
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