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"Examples include the infamous FAT patent, patents on low-level concurrency primitives, and patents on synchronizing calendar clients."

What "patents on low-level concurrency primitives"? Those go back to the 1970s. The Microsoft FAT file system patents have expired. The Microsoft calendar synchronization patent is getting close to expiration.




I was surprised to find this one too, but it was used in a recent lawsuit against Kyocera [1]: http://www.google.com/patents/USRE40989

That, to me, looks like a solution to one of Bloomberg's interview questions, so it's surprising to me that with a 1999 priority date, Microsoft's lawyers did not find enough prior art to keep it from being asserted. (Generally when you assert a patent, if you're smart, you'll conduct another prior art search to make sure it sticks.)

But in general, independent of the quality of the patents themselves, the article [1] indicates that none of those are specific to Windows Phone specifically.

1. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/09/microsoft-drop...




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