From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751169AbWAKPqf (ORCPT ); Wed, 11 Jan 2006 10:46:35 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751182AbWAKPqe (ORCPT ); Wed, 11 Jan 2006 10:46:34 -0500 Received: from zcars04f.nortel.com ([47.129.242.57]:52893 "EHLO zcars04f.nortelnetworks.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751169AbWAKPqe (ORCPT ); Wed, 11 Jan 2006 10:46:34 -0500 Message-ID: <43C5284F.8020104@nortel.com> Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 09:46:23 -0600 From: "Christopher Friesen" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040115 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "linux-os (Dick Johnson)" CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: FAT and Microsoft patent? References: <43C51D65.3030309@nortel.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-OriginalArrivalTime: 11 Jan 2006 15:46:26.0030 (UTC) FILETIME=[2E2748E0:01C616C6] Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org linux-os (Dick Johnson) wrote: > On Wed, 11 Jan 2006, Christopher Friesen wrote: > > >>According to various sources, the USPTO has ruled that Microsoft's >>patent on FAT is valid. >> >>Does this impact Linux? Will we have to remove the filesystem? >> >>Chris > > > You mean the expired patent circa 1980 for their first use of this > technology? No, I mean the three listed on Microsoft's website: # U.S. Patent #5,579,517 "Common name space for long and short filenames" Nov 26, 1996 # U.S. Patent #5,758,352 "Common name space for long and short filenames" May 26, 1998 # U.S. Patent #6,286,013 "Method and system for providing a common name space for long and short file names in an operating system" September 4, 2001 Chris