The United States Patent and Trademark Office last month agreed
to review a patent on Microsoft’s File Allocation Tables (FAT)
technology. The Public Patent Foundation (PubPat) petitioned the
USPTO to look at the patent, claiming it was not a novel invention;
it had appeared in another commercial product prior to Microsoft’s
patent. FAT is used by numerous operating systems, including Linux,
FreeBSD, OpenBSD and others, to exchange media between removable
storage devices like floppy disks and flash memory cards in digital
cameras and computers.
Microsoft will not license FAT for use in free software, and
many in the Linux community fear Microsoft could someday begin
asking for royalties from commercial open source and Linux users.
In this interview, attorney and SearchEnterpriseLinux.com expert
adviser Scott Nathan answers questions about FAT and how patents
and copyrights may impact the open source development process.
Is it a good thing for Linux that this patent is being
reviewed?
Scott Nathan: It’s unusual. It could draw some focus to the fact
that the USPTO is going to invest itself in the validity of claims.
It’s hard since we don’t know why they decided to do it. It could
certainly draw some hope from the fact that they are doing it.