I started looking more into the patents in question, and I'm not really
concerned with respect to FreeDOS. The 3 patents listed on
<http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/ip/tech/fat.asp> are:
* U.S. Patent #5,579,517
Common name space for long and short filenames
* U.S. Patent #5,758,352
Common name space for long and short filenames
* U.S. Patent #6,286,013
Method and system for providing a common name space for long and short
file names in an operating system
The abstracts for each look identical:
"An operating system provides a common name space for both long
filenames and short filenames. In this common namespace, a long filename
and a short filename are provided for each file. Each file has a short
filename directory entry and may have at least one long filename
directory entry associated with it. The number of long filename
directory entries that are associated with a file depends on the number
of characters in the long filename of the file. The long filename
directory entries are configured to minimize compatibility problems with
existing installed program bases."
None of these are directly related to FAT, per se. They are more
directly related to VFAT & LFN support. IANAL, but this doesn't look
very applicable to FreeDOS sans LFN.
-jh
Links:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=5579517.WKU.&OS=PN/5579517&RS=PN/5579517
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=5758352.WKU.&OS=PN/5758352&RS=PN/5758352
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=6286013.WKU.&OS=PN/6286013&RS=PN/6286013
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