I the current patent landscape, Microsoft is not expected to do anything but maximize it's strategic advantage and milk every possible loophole that can improve it's bottom line.
In the fantasy world of "patents protecting innovation", it seems rather dubious that The Inventor should actually obscure the details of his invention under incomprehensible legalese and vague threats with litigation. Quite the contrary, we should expect The Inventor to widely disclose and promote his intellectual product, so that manufacturers find out a Better Way to do it has been Invented, and it's available for licensing.
Could it be that (gasp) the whole premise of the patent system is flawed, that the vast majority of patented methods are trivial, obvious and sometimes unavoidable by the practitioner, and that the benefits companies derive from patents are anticompetitive as opposed to stimulative for research and development ?
In the fantasy world of "patents protecting innovation", it seems rather dubious that The Inventor should actually obscure the details of his invention under incomprehensible legalese and vague threats with litigation. Quite the contrary, we should expect The Inventor to widely disclose and promote his intellectual product, so that manufacturers find out a Better Way to do it has been Invented, and it's available for licensing.
Could it be that (gasp) the whole premise of the patent system is flawed, that the vast majority of patented methods are trivial, obvious and sometimes unavoidable by the practitioner, and that the benefits companies derive from patents are anticompetitive as opposed to stimulative for research and development ?