meushi
Mame
Except if you are a patent troll with a few billions stashed away for legal fees, you cannot get involved in a patent fight with Microsoft and expect to win. For what it is worth, I believe that software shouldn't be patentable as in the current situation they are both patented and copyrighted. It is even against the patent regulations to patent a software method. You cannot win a patent fight against a company that successfully patented the used of letters to write words, the use of words to write sentences, the use of sentences to write a paragraph and so on.I don't know enough about Microsoft but if a company invents a superior product and patents it and everyone prefers it over anything else out there than that company will shread over anyone else in that area of production.
For what it is worth, here comes a short list of "innovative patents" granted to Microsoft after 2000:
-double click (20+ years of prior art)
-using xml to store a document (XML is an open standard that was developed to store documents, obvious and 10+ years of prior art)
-various components of the OpenGL2 specification (OpenGL is an open standard used in the 3D field, Microsoft went to all the committee meetings and patented everything that was discussed during those meetings)
The USPTO and its equivalents worldwide are broken beyond belief, the employees are paid on the amount of patents granted.
It may appear to have a monopoly. As long as everyone plays with their own earned capital + investors all is free. Someone smarter than Bill Gates may not have come around yet to invent something better. After all its better than Linux or Mac right?
Software companies dictate their products mostly around Windows because it is the most popular with the people and not because they have to. If I invented and patented a grow box better and cheaper than Vance's with say a secret electromagnetic superthrive injector it may appear that I now have a monopoly over bonsai training containers for a while until Vance came out with something superior to mine. In the mean time a new technology in soil that makes my injector units work even better may start taking allot of business away from the overpriced Bonsai soil companies. It may not seem fair to some who are not as creative as me, but it is free.
Survival of the fittest is a natural law that will always spring back when bent and in sometimes an ugly way.
Look at the findings of the state vs Microsoft. Microsoft admitted to price fixing and a whole lot of anti-competitive behavior.
For example until very recently, OEMs couldn't ship a desktop/laptop machine without Windows and keep their OEM status license-wise. Shipping a single desktop/laptop machine without Windows meant that they needed to pay full license price for all the shipped machines. Now this poses an interesting problem for enterprises that have volume licensing in place: they pay the product twice, which in essence makes it a Microsoft tax.