Following Microsoft vs Tom Tom
March 6th, 2009I’ve been reading plenty about the Microsoft case against Tom Tom recently. Essentially Microsoft is suing Tom Tom over claims that their in car GPS systems infringe on some of Microsofts patents.
As a couple of sites have pointed out it seems that Tom Tom is being forced into a corner whereby they either pay up to Microsoft and in the process open themselves up to being sued for infringement of the GPL license or drop Linux and be forced to use Microsoft embedded systems in future.
Either way it’s a loose-loose situation for Tom Tom, even if standing up to Microsoft instead of paying up and signing their Non-disclosure agreement is the right thing to do.
It does seems that with Linux on netbooks, smartphones (and maybe netbooks) using Google Android and thePalm Pre Microsoft is feeling the pressure.
Of course many have pointed out that if Microsoft enforces patents on the FAT file system one of the consequences may be that device manufacturers will move over to a GPL licensed system like ext2 instead. Oh the irony!
