A task-centric desktop...

[Justin Gruenberg]

On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 9:28 AM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
> I can give you a detailed, point-by-point comparison of the
> GNOME/KDE/XFCE/LXDE desktop and the ways in which it uses methods,
> designs and techniques that were original Microsoft innovations from
> the early 1990s, as opposed to and compared with existing prior art in
> those fields.
>
> If you want details of which MS patents, the company is not disclosing
> this, intentionally. So no, there, I can't help you.

So we really do not have any idea on what their patent claims are...
so how does taking shots in the dark at what they _might_ have patents
over help?  They have a number of patents covering everything from
algorithms to user interfaces, and there is no certainty that those
patents would withstand a serious challenge.  For all we know, the
patents they "claim" could be the optimal snack to drink combination
that results in the maximum productivity of their programmers.

I think, as others have pointed out, claiming that the Unity and Gnome
Shell interfaces came about because of Microsoft IP claims is without
evidence.