TomTom settles with Microsoft on patent dispute

They were acting quick. TomTom and Microsoft have settled their patent dispute. Of course, it's business as usual. They have to protect the interest of their shareholders, and a lengthy patent lawsuit is probably creating too much uncertainty for business partners.

I don't particularly mind them settling their [sometimes ridiculously trivial] claims on car navigation systems. But the settlement also includes the long-filename-patent that e.g. has been dismissed by Germany's Federal Patent Court about one year ago on the grounds of being too trivial and ISO9660 RockRidge constituting prior art. So given that the highest patent court in Germany has already issued such a judgement, I would be quite surprised to see a completely different verdict in the US. Either ISO9660 is prior art or not. I doubt there's much to debate on it.

So well, MS will still uphold their implicit threat against anyone who uses Linux + VFAT filesystem in a commercial product. In the end, I hope, this will simply drive people away from using FAT or VFAT altogether. It's not that they are particularly great filesystems anyway... and vendors just want to make it convenient for _windows_ users to use their products by enabling them with VFAT.