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Microsoft Gets FAT Off File System Patents | 16 comments (16 topical) | Post A Comment
Patents DO expire...[ Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#6)
by SMEE on Tue Jan 06, 2004 at 07:52:26 AM PDT

...patents last only 17 years according to the Constitution. Unless Congress extends it. Anything patented in 1976 is clearly out of patent now. A smart engineer could use that old patent to essentially duplicate FAT and make it compatible with FAT standards perfectly legally. The original BIOS patent was cracked in a highly original way. The company in question--the name eludes me--set up two teams of engineers, sealed off from one another. The first team took the code apart line by line and described it in standard English. The second team took the descriptions and created a new BIOS that was compatible with existing machines. It was all perfectly legal. So, a smart lawyer and a smart engineer shouldn't have a problem getting around these phony charges... After all, if fifteen years old are publishing cracks and keygens ten minutes after the next flavor of Windows comes out or any other program, surely real adults can legally defeat yet another money grab by Gates. Wait till HDD prices reverse their recent collapse because of this! The manufacturers won't take this lying down. Either that, or we'll all be ordering FAT drives from China....

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Microsoft Gets FAT Off File System Patents | 16 comments (16 topical) | Post A Comment
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