Microsoft vs Eolas

I hate when these legal battles come down to this. Eolas sues Microsoft for infringing upon their plugin patent. I'm sure everyone is probably infringing upon this thing (Mozilla, Opera, Netscape, etc). Eolas could use this garbage patent for anything!

They could knock MS right out of the content-rich browser market, stop there, and leave the market for the little guys. (Yay!) Or Eolas could just go ripping through everyone with that patent. (Boo!) Even if the guy behind Eolas does vow to leave the free world standing, he could change his mind at any time. Worse yet, I could see SCO buying the patent and doing what they do best.

Sadly, I must say no matter how good (anti-MS) Eolas' intentions are, it's too dangerous to let them establish this precedence, so I really must cheer for Microsoft in this round. Surprisingly, I can't really recall instances of Microsoft sinking into the murky realm of enforcing bullshit software patents. Maybe they just haven't had to resort to that yet.