“Since when does Microsoft Corp. agree to give away patent
rights to competitors for free?
When it wants to placate a heavy-hitting technical
standards-making body, for one.
The World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, went off on member
Microsoft last month after the company announced it had won a
patent on technology that the group adopted last year.
Rather than fight, Microsoft backed off, agreeing to freely
license the patent, which relates to a technology known as
cascading style sheets.”