Let us not forget that every threat that Microsoft has ever come up against in the software industry has come off second best, Netscape, Be, Sendo and dozens of other companies have all been bankrupted by the sheer scale of Microsoft.
Yes, but this has nothing to do with software patents. Your email sounds more like an anti-Microsoft rant, copied from straight from slashdot, dressed up as concern over software patents...
This week it was announced that thanks to the Irish MEP(he's the bloke who's sponsored by Microsoft) the various clever refinements that would deny the huge multinationals (Microsoft, SCO, Sun, and to a much lesser extent IBM) the ability to simply wipe our own software industry, were removed and the original suggestion for software patents put forward.
...not to mention being inaccurate in places. The open source/free/whatever they like to be called movement has painted IBM as some kind of perfect hero... Maybe you'd be interested to know that IBM has far more software patents than anybody else in the world. In fact, they register hundreds of new patents every month.
Also interesting is that Microsoft is not a big user of a legal action. They rarely initiate legal action... most of their cases are brought against them. Your email is complaining about the threat of Microsoft, yet you give no examples of them doing such a thing, even in the USA where software patents exist. Microsoft tends to compete in the marketplace, whereas its competitors like to whinge a lot and compete in the courtroom.
Even more interesting is that Microsoft is as much a victim of software patents as anyone else. Not long ago a small company in California, whose
only purpose was to register patents was awarded half a billion dollars over their running-applications-in-a-browser patent. The decision has since been overturned, but the point is that big companies are as vulnerable as small ones or individuals.
