The X. Civil Senate of the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has confirmed the validity of European patent 618 540 granted in favour of Microsoft Corp, Redmond, Washington, USA. This IP right relates to the problem, apparently still relevant today, when programs which, for reasons of low storage capacity or limited computing power, are only able to work with comparatively short file names, are also to be used in computer systems which permit names of almost any length to identify a file. A well-known example of a limitation on the number of characters for the name of a file is the MS-DOS operating system with its FAT file system, which only permits file names with a maximum of 8 characters (8.3 convention). The teaching of the patent allowed Microsoft to introduce the VFAT file system (from WINDOWS 95). This system allows long file names and is nevertheless compatible with the FAT file system. The solution was achieved by an assignment of the file attribute field possible in the FAT file system when storing a long name, which has the effect that the name entry is ignored during data processing with this system.
The Federal Patent Court (2 Ni 2/05 of 26 October 2006) had considered the teaching to be non-inventive in view of the fact that the ROCK RIDGE INTERCHANGE PROTOCOL had overcome the 8.3 limitation for the ISO 9660 standard, which was relevant for CD-ROMs at the time. The Federal Court of Justice was unable to agree with this because - with expert advice - it took a different meaning from that of the Federal Patent Court from the granted patent claim. According to this, the patent teaches to store two independent directory entries (one with a short name, one with a long name). The ROCK RIDGE INTERCHANGE PROTOCOL differs from this because, if followed, both names are contained in one and the same directory entry. For the inventors of the patent, therefore, other problems arose in overcoming the 8.3 restriction.
Judgment of the Federal Supreme Court (BGH) of 20 April 2010 - X ZR 27/07
Previous instance: Federal Patent Court - 2 Ni 2/05 (EU) of 26.10.2006
Source: Press release of the BGH
Goldberg Attorneys at Law
Attorney at Law Michael Ullrich, LL.M. (Information Law)
Specialist lawyer for information technology law
E-mail: info@goldberg.de
