Quote:Microsoft to gouge for flash memory FAT licences

$quarter per device, or $250,000 per company

By INQUIRER staff: Thursday 04 December 2003, 21:48
IT SEEMS that Microsoft has decided to pull in some old patents and start charging manufacturers of flash devices who may use the FAT file system in their gizmos.

Microsoft claims rights to the FAT file system back to 1976, and it has made a few changes since then, as we recall only too well.

The new scheme is based on a few patents including this lot, U.S. Patent #5,579,517, U.S. Patent #5,745,902, U.S. Patent #5,758,352, and U.S. Patent #6,286,013.

Microsoft also claims that it's filed a claim for a patent that the US Patent Office hasn't yet granted, which will extend to products outside the US.

It is apparently offering companies a licence where they pay either a $quarter per unit or a $quarter of a million per manufacturer.

Pricing for devices that aren't the kind of flash you find in TVs, video cameras, printers, musical instruments, audio players, digital cameras and others can apparently be negotiated with the Vole.

That'd be Smartphones, then.

The licence will be conditional on the FAT system being used on a device being compliant with Microsoft standards.

Companies might like to negotiate narrower or broader licences with the Vole.

And yes, you may not need a licence for a device which isn't formatted, but if it ends up using FAT you probably do need one, it appears.

Almost unbelievable. But it's true.

Point is, if Microsoft is going to push and shove manufacturers in Taiwan or China to license its FAT system, it may just end up pushing these manufacturers straight into the arms of other OSes, such as Linux. Or even IBM PC DOS, which is still its own entity. µ