[ros-general] Microsoft wants royalties for use of FAT

[Vizzini]

On Mon, 2003-12-08 at 19:17, Rick Parrish wrote:
> Waldo Alvarez wrote:
> 
> >
> >Let's keep with NTFS and FAT and with time design a new patent free 
> >filesystem. If M$ complaints then we take away the drivers and ppl will be able to get them from previous releases. The FSF did that with XMMS and patents with MP3s.
> >  
> >
> Works for me. Sort of like limping along on MP3s and GIFs until 
> patent/license free OGG and PNG support is ready.

In the United States, liability for patent infringement exists whether
or not you've been notified by the patent holder of such infringement. 
In other words, if you accidentally step on someone else's IP, they will
be able to sue you for royalties whether or not it was your "fault". 
It's a pure liability - no fault is required.

Furthermore, courts have a history of stiffer penalites (i.e. higher
royalty payments) for infringers who *knew* they were infringing. 
That's why you see "patent pending" on lots of manufactured items.

Finally, as I said before, both developers and end users are liable for
patent infringement.

With these points in mind, I think we need an official policy of
avoiding patents as much as we possibly can while retaining Windows
system compatibility.  If this means (for example) defaulting to a
non-FAT, non-NTFS filesystem, that's what we have to do.

 -Vizzini