Microsoft announced today that the company has settled its lawsuit with TomTom, and on terms that look rather more favourable to Microsoft. As noted here, here, and here on Neowin, Microsoft had sued TomTom for violating its patents, including those related to the "long file name" feature of VFAT. This particular aspect of the case was of particular concern to Linux-supporters, as the ability to create, read, and write to FAT and FAT32 partitions is possible with Linux, and so Microsoft's assertion of its patents associated with such features was taken as an attack on Linux.
TomTom counter-sued, claiming that Microsoft was in breach of four of its patents.
The settlement, which is good for five years, means that TomTom will pay Microsoft unspecified royalties for the use of its patents and will phase out over the course of the next two years the use of technologies covered by those patents. Part of the agreement between the two companies involves protecting TomTom's customers from the threat of lawsuits from Microsoft.
In addition to getting royalties from TomTom, Microsoft will not have to pay any money to TomTom for the use of its patents, and so it is fair to say that Microsoft has definitely come out ahead on this one.
Microsoft's silence on the possible ramifications of the lawsuit for users of Linux and the company's future intentions toward the open-source OS are not likely to be well received in the Linux community. TomTom, however, has reaffirmed its support of free software. According to Peter Spours, the company's Director of IP Strategy and Transactions, "This agreement puts an end to the litigation between our two companies. It is drafted in a way that ensures TomTom's full compliance with its obligations under the GPLv2, and thus reaffirms our commitment to the open source community."
Either that or, for example in the case of Ubuntu, FAT32 support will just be moved from the standard repo to Multiverse. That way Canonical has plausible deniability as none of the multiverse projects are maintained by themselves but it wouldn't be at the detriment to the users. I don't think Microsoft would bother personally.
Last edited by =NickJ= on 30 Mar 2009 - 22:04
Microsoft has shown no interest whatsoever in enforcing patents on people who aren't making money on Microsoft's work, and it's VERY unlikely it'll go that way.
Hate software patents, not the companies that enforce them.
Not much of a story if tomtom only agreed to pay microsoft $1 for the "license"
Of more significance will be the effect on the consumer. Will we still be able to pop the SD card out of the tomtom and read/write it in a PC?. Or will tomtom simply do away totally with the SD card option?
Of more significance will be the effect on the consumer. Will we still be able to pop the SD card out of the tomtom and read/write it in a PC?. Or will tomtom simply do away totally with the SD card option?
Well, TomTom could use older FAT without the long filename abilities.
Or, as I have pointed out before, they can ditch FAT completely and go ext2/3. Direct USB/Network connection could use CIFS/NFS/FTP. And, for anyone needing direct card transfer/read/write, there are ext2 drivers for Windows, so those users could still be taken care of.
(and for al I personally know Tom Tom's use Linux so feel free to correct me)
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