Microsoft has sued Tom-Tom, a maker of GPS enabled navigation devices, over patents related to its FAT-32 file storage system.
This lawsuit is important because MANY devices use non-Microsoft source code to access FAT formatted disks. You probably use one. For instance, your digital camera almost certainly stores files using the FAT32 system. And your external backup hard drive as well as most embedded Linux devices. But none use Microsoft’s OS to do so, making MSFT no money.
The threat this lawsuit represents has has the Open Invention Network, which was formed to hold patents that could be used to threaten Microsoft and other patent holders possibly threatening to Linux and open source software in general, considering unleashing the dogs of patent war.
And isn’t all of this just silly?
Software and technology patents, maybe patents in general, need to go. I once was accosted by a person who said he held the patent on “computers speaking fax messages”. So I ask, “well why the hell don’t you sell a computer that speaks fax messages?” No answer. The idea that you can patent an idea of doing something is stupid. I don’t mind you copyrighting how you did it, or limiting your employees from doing it for somebody else should they leave, but the idea itself should be open.
The example I use if what if some patent troll had thought up “a system for doing different things when false than when true”. It’s called an IF statement and you can’t write software without it.
So much money floats around patents that I doubt anything will be done about this. But if Obama, who I hear loves to screw business, would like to screw businesses and inadvertently help them and us out he would get rid of software patents entirely.