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Re: [LUG] Microsoft signs patent agreement with HTC over Android phones

 

On Thu, 29 Apr 2010, Rob Beard wrote:

On 29/04/10 10:42, Neil Stone wrote:

On 04/29/10 10:23, Rob Beard wrote:
Hi folks,

Just seen this on The Register...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/29/microsoft_htc_linux_patents/

I wonder what Google think about this?

Rob


How the hell can they threaten legal action without being specific about
what laws/patents have been broken ?


That's what I was wondering, but they managed the same with TomTom.

AIUI the TomTom case was about long filenames if VFAT directories... Which MS does have a patent on. That might well be the same thing for HTC - you want to access removable media (or allow the internal 'disk' to be readable by external hardware) then if you want long filenames, you pay MS the license fee to do so...

I plug my phones into my Linux PC and I see them as a USB disk - with long filenames... does that mean my Linux PC is breaking some patent somewhere? (probably, but the UK doesn't honour software patents - yet - so ...? )

/dev/sdb on /n900 type vfat (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,user=gordon)

http://lwn.net/Articles/338981/

Gordon

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