
Microsoft: Litigate on FAT, and you'll be the next Unisys - vaksel
http://blogs.zdnet.com/perlow/?p=9594
======
johns
This headline is misleading and poorly chosen by the original author. Isn't it
a convention that headlines that start with an entity followed by a colon,
then a statement are meant to convey that the entity is making the statement
that follows (e.g. "Microsoft: Windows 7 to Cure Cancer")? In this case, the
author is making a statement _to_ MS instead of this being an MS statement.

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tptacek
It's hard to imagine that anything MSFT does with patents is going to damage
its reputation any more than the '90s already have. Unisys was hurt because
before the GIF debacle, nobody knew who they were, and after it they were a
comic book supervillain. Fairly or not, Microsoft is already the Lex Luthor of
software.

~~~
biohacker42
Fair point, this won't kill MSFT.

But it could kill MSFT's attempt to enter this market slice. Everyone will run
from MSFT like vampires from sunlight, and MSFT will never be a significant
player in the GPS market. Perhaps the whole device market!

If a free alternative that won't get you sued is available, would you touch
MSFT?

~~~
electromagnetic
I think the biggest risk for MSFT is purely reputation. Their reputation has
got worse and worse and I believe you're right, it's going to start damaging
their ability to enter any market other than computers and games consoles (and
only there because they actually have a _good_ reputation).

I don't trust MSFT's reliability with products. I've even noticed some classic
MSFT flaws in the Xbox 360, namely that it tells you somethings wrong with how
_you_ set up the Xbox when it cannot connect to Live, yet if you actually
watch the connection steps it connects to the network, connects to the
internet and gets 2/3 the way through connecting to MSFT's Live and then it
fails, yet they blame you. This reminds me of Live Messenger, when the service
goes down for everyone (including articles on ZDNet and places about the
outage) you check the service and it _always_ says that the Live systems are
running without a problem. I still can't understand why MSFT simply never
admits there's a problem; IMO it hurts their reputation a lot more that they
don't than if they did.

Honestly, I find myself looking at the apple website, watching the prices of
all their products. Because once there's a good enough deal, or I have enough
cash to spare (whichever comes first) then I'm getting one. With my wifes'
education discount some of the prices are dangerously close to a good deal as
it pretty much becomes tax free, in fact I think some save more.

~~~
batasrki
More to the point, they're starting to erode their reputation in the game
console world, too.

Check here: [http://consumerist.com/5160187/identifying-yourself-as-a-
les...](http://consumerist.com/5160187/identifying-yourself-as-a-lesbian-gets-
you-banned-on-xbox-live)

and here: [http://consumerist.com/5161145/microsofts-policy-
regarding-i...](http://consumerist.com/5161145/microsofts-policy-regarding-
identifying-sexual-orientation-on-xbox-live)

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krschultz
I work for an embedded Linux hardware company. We use ext3 on our SD drives
and IP over USB to handle writing to it from Mac and Windows, obviously
natively from Linux. I'm not sure why TomTom chose FAT. We didn't even have to
write our own drivers. Another option is to make the device wifi or Bluetooth
so that the filesystem is completely irrelevant to the host.

~~~
edfrghjk
So you can download new maps onto the cards by putting them into your PC and
clicking on their website.

~~~
sho
If you're downloading things from their website anyway, they could include a
driver for whatever FS they wanted. They could build on top of FUSE so you
wouldn't even need admin rights, probably.

~~~
edfrghjk
So your average home user who wants an addon map of all the local McDs on his
GPS is going to install a new filesystem driver!

~~~
sho
Why not? Packaged as an executable, double click to run? It's not that hard.
All those iPod users managed to "install a new filesystem driver" just fine.

Not as convenient as the "just works" FAT on USB, perhaps, but hardly an
insurmountable problem. I'm surprised they're not bundling some kind of
management program already - asking users to manually arrange files on USB
sticks seems a bit fiddly.

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iigs
I'm not sure how anyone would get around 6,256,642, which is "Method and
system for file system management using a flash-erasable, programmable, read-
only memory", which honestly just sounds like the idea of a filesystem
trivially applied to flash. It may be possible that some other filesystem
would not match the description closely enough to be enforceable.

That said, two of the other patents are regarding long filename support in
fat32. If the outcome of this is that fat32 is put to rest as the default
embedded filesystem, I personally could not be happier about it.

It wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft's legal team was not trying to pull crap
with Linux, the kernel, and the GPL here. I suspect that they're really going
after the Navigation System patents and there's probably a legal reason why
they have to prosecute as much of their portfolio as applies. IIRC this
prevents the otherwise unprosecuted patents from becoming unenforceable at a
later time because they were neglected or not tended.

~~~
razzmataz
>this prevents the otherwise unprosecuted patents from becoming unenforceable
at a later time because they were neglected or not tended.

You're thinking of trademarks. Patents can't become unenforceable thru
neglect... trademarks, though, can...

~~~
cgranade
IANAL, but I think that there is a bit of an exception in the legal doctrine
of promissory estoppel
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel#Promissory_estoppel>), which says that
one cannot withdraw a promise to another party that they have come to rely
upon. If that promise is implied by inaction, it is still sometimes seen as a
promise.

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kragen
One thing that's worth pointing out is that Unisys's shares are trading at
33¢, and its market capitalization is down to US$120M. This share price is
about 4% of the heights it reached in 1999, when it started to enforce these
patents against GIF. It's low enough that I'm surprised they're still listed
on the NYSE.

It wouldn't be surprising if a patent pirate company like Intellectual
Ventures or Walker Digital acquired Unisys's patent portfolio, either at
bankruptcy auction or by acquiring the company today.

