[funsec] Federal Patent Court declares FAT patent of Microsoft null and void

[TheGesus]

Don't get all excited... it's Germany....



The Federal Patent Court has declared a Microsoft patent on the file
allocation system File Allocation Table (FAT) invalid for the Federal
Republic of Germany. The claim in question is the protection claim
granted by the European Patent Office under EP 0618540 for a "common
namespace for long and short filenames." This in turn is based on the
US patent No. 5,758,352. At the German Patent and Trade Mark Office
(GPTO) the patent is protected under DE 69429378. According to a
recently published decision (PDF file) by the 2nd Division of the
Federal Patent Court bearing the file number: 2Ni 2/05 (EU) and dated
October 26, 2006 the claims made are "not based on inventive
activity."

more here...

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/86141