M$ to license FAT

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Dec 08, 2003 at 10:42:21PM -0500, cbbrowne-HInyCGIudOg at public.gmane.org wrote:
> What is Highly Curious is the fact that Atari was selling systems based
> on FAT filesystems probably fifteen years ago, and were never attacked
> for this.
> 
> What is VERY interesting is that none of the patents in question have to
> do with the filesystem.  They ALL have to do with the way DOS 6 started
> providing support for longer filenames.  The patents date back to 1996,
> and every single one is about filenaming.

That would be DOS 7 (aka win95).  No version prior to Win95 (OR if you
ran NT) could do long filenames on FAT.  I think OS/2 had a way to do it
though.

> 1 6,286,013 Method and system for providing a common name space for long
> and short file names in an operating system
> 
> 2 5,758,352 Common name space for long and short filenames
> 
> 3 5,745,902 Method and system for accessing a file using file names
> having different file name formats
> 
> 4 5,579,517 Common name space for long and short filenames

How many patents can they have for the same thing anyhow?

Lennart Sorensen
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