Microsoft’s File Allocation Table (FAT) is undergoing review by the US Patents and Trademark Office (USPRO) following a request by the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) nonprofit legal group, made in April.
PUBPAT claimed prior art existed to demonstrate that Microsoft’s FAT patent, awarded in 1996, was obvious and should not have been granted.
In a statement at the time, PUBPAT claimed: Microsoft using its control over the interchange of digital media to aid its ongoing effort to deter competition.
PUBPAT executive director Dan Ravicher yesterday called the USPTO’s re-examination of Microsoft’s patent, The first step towards ending the harm caused to the public by this patent, that should never have been issued.
The FAT table is maintained by an operating system on the hard disk to provide a map of clusters where a file has been stored. Files saved to disk are not necessarily stored in adjacent clusters, and are often scattered across the disk in different sizes.
Microsoft developed a FAT system in 1976, and the company’s web site claims that, today, FAT has become the ubiquitous format used for interchange of media between computers… [and] between digital devices. The FAT file system is now supported by a wide variety of operating systems.
Last November, Microsoft released FAT under a commercially reasonable, non-exclusive license charging $0.25 per unit with a cap of $250,000. Microsoft at the time released 4,000 parents and announced it would release 5,400 patents pending for licensing.
At the time, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith said Microsoft does not expect a material change in revenue for the foreseeable future due to new licensing deals.
Microsoft said in a statement yesterday it licensed FAT to improve interoperability, but was confident in the validity of the parent. Commenting on the USPTO review, Microsoft said: We have the opportunity to demonstrate why this file system innovation deserves patent protection.
