Originally Posted by qole

Thankfully, Nokia could run their tablets FAT-free if they wanted to

I have a friend who had to basically shut his company down while being sued frivolously by a big-dog corporation who was hoping to destroy them this way. After they won the lawsuit, they were able to start back up again, but my friend's company is a rare exception. Most of the time, big companies launch these lawsuits to grind small companies into submission.

... It isn't a case of cross-license and everything is ok. If Tom Tom or any other company cross licenses patents then by section 7 of GPLv2 (for the Linux kernel) they lose the rights to redistribute the kernel *at all*.

Microsoft has been going around and doing these patent cross licensing deals with companies under NDA's so they never come to light for *years*.

That was the whole point of the Novell deal - Microsoft lawyers finally thought they'd found a way to *publicly* do these cross licensing deals and get around the GPLv2, but the GPLv3 put paid to that.

Tom Tom are the first company to publicly refuse to engage in this ugly little protection racket, and so they got sued. Had Tom Tom silently agreed to violate the GPL, as so many others have, then we'd only hear about a vague "patent cross licensing deal" just like the ones Microsoft announces with other companies.

Make no mistake, this is intended to force Tom Tom to violate the GPL, or change to Microsoft embedded software.

According to Microsoft, the agreement includes patent coverage for Microsoft’s three file management systems patents provided in a manner that is fully compliant with TomTom’s obligations under the General Public License Version 2 (GPLv2). TomTom will remove from its products the functionality related to two file management system patents (the “FAT LFN patents”), which enables efficient naming, organizing, storing and accessing of file data, Microsoft said. TomTom will remove this functionality within two years, and the agreement provides for coverage directly to TomTom’s end customers under these patents during that time.

Peter Spours, Director of IP Strategy and Transactions at TomTom, said:

“This agreement puts an end to the litigation between our two companies. It is drafted in a way that ensures TomTom’s full compliance with its obligations under the GPLv2, and thus reaffirms our commitment to the open source community.”

"We were able to work with TomTom to develop a patent agreement that addresses their needs and ours in a pragmatic way. When addressing IP infringement issues, there are two possible paths: securing patent coverage or not using the technology at issue.

Originally Posted by fanoush

Looks like we won't enjoy any fancy fireworks and patent lawyering
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Windows/Mic...Battle-766706/

Originally Posted by SD69

Thanks for the post. I hope the knee jerk "MS is trying to kill off all Linux" conspiracy theorists will accept that they were wrong... Linux (and maemo) advocates have more substantial things to worry about.