Nithin Kamath’s Weblog

News.com.com reports that:

In their latest action, filed last week, the examiners concluded that the company’s File Allocation Table (FAT) file system is, in fact, “novel and non-obvious,” entitling it to patentability. Now the office is in the process of issuing a “patent re-examination certificate,” which signals the finality of the decision, a Microsoft representative said.

But the sad part is as under:
“It also voiced concern that Microsoft would try to seek royalties from companies that sell and support Linux for using the technology, potentially posing a threat to the free software community. Under the terms of the Free Software Foundation’s General Public License, Linux cannot be distributed if it contains patented technology that requires royalty payments.”

Lets wait and see what the outcome of this is, we may soon see what action Microsoft plans to take.