German appeal court upholds Microsoft FAT patent

“The German appeal court has overturned a decision by the German
Federal Patent Tribunal to declare Microsoft’s patent for the File
Allocation Table (FAT) file system invalid. In judgement number X
ZR 27/07, handed down on Tuesday, the tenth civil division of the
Karlsruhe-based court confirmed the enforceability of the company’s
commercial rights in Germany. It has not yet published its
reasoning, but has confirmed the decision in a short press release
(German language link).

“The case revolves around patent rights for a “common namespace
for long and short file names” conferred by European Patent Office
patent number EP 0618540, which is based on US patent number
5,758,352. The common namespace solved the problem of short file
names made up of a maximum of 8 characters encountered in older
operating systems such as MS_DOS.”

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