Microsoft And GoPro Sign Patent Licensing Deal For File Storage Technology

Microsoft, though its Microsoft Licensing LLC, and GoPro today announced that they have signed a collaborative patent licensing deal for “certain file storage and other system technologies.”

“This agreement with GoPro shows the incredible breadth of technology sharing enabled through patent transactions,” said Nick Psyhogeos, president of Microsoft Technology Licensing, in today’s extremely brief announcement. “Microsoft’s licensing of personal wearable technologies is seeing strong demand as we partner with companies from all industries to optimize solutions for their customers around the globe.”

The terms of the deal are confidential and neither Microsoft nor GoPro shared any details beyond this basic statement. It’s unclear which patents are actually covered by this, for example.

It’s worth noting, though, that Microsoft Licensing explicitly lists the exFAT file system as one of the technologies that are available for licensing, so chances are this is covered under the agreement. This file system allows for saving larger files on storage media from 32GB to 256TB. The newest GoPro models can handle SD cards with up to 128GB of space. For larger cards, GoPro already uses the exFAT format, but for smaller ones under 64GB, it still uses the old FAT format, which then splits up files in 4GB segments because that’s the maximum file size for FAT32 disks.

We asked Microsoft if it could share any additional information about the deal, but the company politely declined (“Nothing to share beyond what’s in the press release.”).

Despite the lack of details, though, the stock market reacted very positive to today’s announcement. GoPro’s shares were up over 5 percent in after-hours trading. That doesn’t quite make up for the 10 percent drop the company registered after its earnings missed analyst expectations earlier this week, though.

Microsoft India (R&D) Pvt. Ltd.