Re: [Fsfe-uk] Anything to make a buck?

[Chris Croughton]

On Mon, Dec 08, 2003 at 12:12:06PM +0000, Neil Darlow wrote:

> I came across this today. It seems that Microsoft are now charging royalties 
> for the manufacture of media using the FAT filesystem, most notably digital 
> memory media. Obviously manufacturers will be rushing to find ways around 
> this but it appeared with little publicity.
> 
> http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/ip/tech/fat.asp

The Register picked up on it last week (dated 2003-12-04):

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/34348.html

I made reference to it in another message but without a URL (because I
thought it was "known news" by then).

I think that this is one of the areas where we stand a good chance of
persuading people (and politicians) about the evil of software patents,
because this sort of behaviour is obviously a form of entrapment (get
everyone using the format, thinking that there is no problem, and then
trying to spring licensing fees on them).  Yes, it happened before with
the GIF compression, but that didn't really affect most people (because
they didn't produce GIF files, only used them).  This one is more
obvious, especially when you point out that it's not just 'computers'
but all of their mobile phones, digital cameras etc., which almost
everyone (except me) seems to have these days.

Chris C