Microsoft opens FAT file system

As previously reported, the move represents the company's broadest effort to date to allow others to gain access to the company's intellectual property portfolio. Microsoft also announced specific programmes to license its ClearType font display technology and its File Allocation Table (FAT) file system. Microsoft said Lexar Media is licensing the FAT file system technology and that Agfa Monotype is licensing ClearType.

On a conference call, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith said the company has been getting requests from other companies to both clarify and expand its licensing effort. As a result, Smith said Microsoft is offering a broad program to license its technology on clear, "commercially reasonable" terms.

"Naturally, Microsoft's significant commitment to research and development and our large investments in R&D have resulted in a valuable growing and diverse intellectual property portfolio," Smith said. "By making more of our intellectual property available for licensing to others we will help create new opportunities for collaboration (in the technology industry)."

The company said it would make "100 percent" of its patent portfolio royalty-free for noncommercial use by the academic community.

Smith said that Microsoft is following the lead of other technology companies that have done this for some time, such as Intel, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Fujitsu. "We have worked to learn from the examples they have set," Smith said. "We're joining their ranks today."

Microsoft has had a limited programme for licensing its technology for some time. The company has gradually expanded the effort in recent years to meet both business and regulatory needs.

In August, Microsoft said it had broadened the terms by which it licensed certain protocols needed to create products that work with Windows. Under its settlement with regulators, Microsoft is required to license such code on "reasonable and nondiscriminatory" terms.

The company also recently expanded its shared source programme to allow other companies that provide PC technical support to have access to some source code. Also, in November Microsoft said it would license the Extensible Markup Language-based file formats used in the latest edition of its Office applications on a royalty-free basis. That programme, set to begin on Friday, was motivated by looming competitive and regulatory pressures, analysts said.

Smith said that Microsoft did not expand its licensing programme specifically to address European regulators.

"I really don't see this announcement as relating directly to the issues in Brussels," Smith said. "I think you can think of this as a step that is consistent with kinds of steps government regulators have been encouraging us to take. It is not designed to, and it does not in fact, address the specific issues that have been involved in the case in Brussels."

Smith said that among the requests from competitors is that the company expand its communications protocol licensing program, something the company is not doing with Wednesday's announcement.

The effort, which has been in the planning stages for about a year, is also not expected to add significantly to Microsoft's bottom line. Smith said he did not believe the licensing push would add materially to earnings for the foreseeable future.

"Fundamentally, that's not why we are doing this," Smith said. "We are doing this to work better and promote better collaboration with the industry."