The first time I clicked the link...
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2009/12/amanda-gefter-books-arts.php
... I got a bogus system scan web page and then it tried to get me to run an EXE file. I tried the link a few minutes later and it seemed okay. I'm perplexed as to what happened. From my browser history, the bad link was...
h t t p : / / n i s s a n - r e n t . c n / g o . p h p ? i d = 2 0 0 6 - 5 1 & k e y = 0 5 2 2 c 7 0 6 6 & d = 1

I'm using Opera 10.10 (latest) and haven't been anywhere other than major news sites today. Just thought I'd mention it in case anyone else sees the same.

In any case, this is a good thing. Is it goodwill from Microsoft? I'm not sure. When they made the big internet patent grab several years ago, it seemed about as evil as you can get. But in having done that, one could argue that they kept other more evil companies from grabbing and exploiting them. If Microsoft simply gave them away now, that would be goodwill. If they charged $100B, that would be evil. If they charge essentially what they've spent to acquire and hold them, well, that still seems like a good thing. Twenty-two patents at $50K each would be $1.1M. So if the price was >$5M, I'd call it evil.

The quote in the Q&A is regarding a different product. The article is about the zinc gluconate gel for colds. Your quote has to do with the allergy gel that does not contain the offending zinc gluconate.