Open Invention Network seeks prior art to burn FAT patents

The Open Invention Network (OIN), a consortium of companies that have banded together to defend the Linux platform from patent litigation, announced on Tuesday that it has launched an effort to find prior art for Microsoft’s FAT patents.

The OIN’s new FAT-busting project is a response to a lawsuit that Microsoft settled earlier this year with navigation device maker TomTom. The lawsuit claimed that TomTom’s Linux-based products infringe on a number of Microsoft’s patents, including several that describe technical attributes of Microsoft’s FAT filesystem. TomTom initially fought back by filing a countersuit of its own and by joining the OIN, but eventually agreed to pay a licensing fee and remove the features from its implementation.