Situation: Microsoft is in court with a GPS company over some patents.

Problem: News story is boring.

Solution: Headline "Microsoft Sues Linux", add picture of Steve Ballmer looking mean. Sprinkle with spelling mistakes and "no word yet" unprofessionalisms. Lame.

From the source blog post:

Asked if this TomTom case is the start of a broader legal campaign over those alleged violations, Gutierrez said no.

"Microsoft respects and appreciates the important role that open-source software plays in our industry and we respect and appreciate the passion and the great contribution that open-source developers make in our industry," Gutierrez said. He said that respect and appreciation is "not inconsistent with our respect for intellectual-property rights."

the lawsuit includes the patent on long filenames in the fat32 filesystem. this is a big deal.

aren't there BSD licensed solutions to this plus prior art?

welcome to the blogosphere

Welcome to Silicon Alley Insider.

If this actually poses a threat to Linux, you can bet IBM (and Google) are going to be taking Microsoft to court over their patents that Microsoft probably infringes on.

Software patents are like nuclear weapons. You bring them out, and everyone loses.

And much like nukes, having them in the first place was a backward idea.

No. Patents are required for certain kinds of development. Places where there are extremely high costs of R&D, and easy reverse engineering. Take pharmaceuticals. It costs several hundred million dollars for the studies to prove that the drug works, and more for the research. Furthermore, it is easy to reverse engineer drugs (the compounds are printed on the package!).

This means that there is little incentive to develop a drug unless you can guarantee exclusivity for a period (everyone else can always undercut you because they don't have the R&D costs).

This probably isn't over any system components since Microsoft is of course aware of the Open Innovation Network which has a patent portfolio specifically for defensive use in case there is an attempt for any company to sue another company for usage of base system components (which goes all the way up to the desktop, excluding media codecs).

http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/

Did anyone read the article? You didn't. Microsoft is suing TomTom. (Sorry pg, I couldn't resist the put-down.)

Here are the patents: http://www.pat2pdf.org/pat2pdf/foo.pl?number=6,175,789 http://www.pat2pdf.org/pat2pdf/foo.pl?number=7,054,745 http://www.pat2pdf.org/pat2pdf/foo.pl?number=6,704,032 http://www.pat2pdf.org/pat2pdf/foo.pl?number=7,117,286 http://www.pat2pdf.org/pat2pdf/foo.pl?number=6,202,008 http://www.pat2pdf.org/pat2pdf/foo.pl?number=5,579,517 http://www.pat2pdf.org/pat2pdf/foo.pl?number=5,758,352 http://www.pat2pdf.org/pat2pdf/foo.pl?number=6,256,642

Only the '517, '352, and '642 patents appear to cover the Linux kernel.

Specifically they are sueing over the support of8.3 versions of long filenames. Presumably the sd card in the tomtom uses FAT

Specifically they are sueing over the support of 8.3 versions of long filenames. Presumably the sd card in the tomtom uses FAT