Not that I wish to continue this as an argument but your retort is left with 2 flaws. 1) you appear to have highlighted breach of contract but fail to see the connection. That contract included licensing intellectual property related to java, and some of that ip would be patent licenses pertaining to the JVM. Furthermore Microsoft had patents of it own in this case that were the core of their argument that since they licensed Java and owned these other ip assets they were entitled to slam them together as they saw fit. Even though that was well beyond the scope of their Java license. So the assertion that patents were not involved would be ignorant to say the least. 2) Microsoft asked the judge upon ruling for clarification of Microsofts ability to develop similar systems and to establish to scope of Suns Java patents. The argument being that if they couldn't merge Java with these other elements could they build a Java-like system to fill that gap. And the judge indeed indicated that their prohibition on Java was just on Java and that they could develop something like it so long as they didn't infringe on Suns ip as they were now barred from using it.

Nope not confused. The Sun vs MS Java fight was a cluster of patents on both sides. Thus why a judge ruled that whilst Microsoft had violated it's license to java, it could develop a similar system, i.e .NET. While I have heard these rumors before, I can't find anything in the .NET framework or how it works to suggest that they licensed Java tech. Oracles patents in these areas are actually pretty Java specific, whilst Microsoft's patents for .NET are very broad. (like every MS patent) The core of my belief is that Microsoft must only have something "on paper" if you will. It's something they are pretty sure will lead to a protracted legal battle so not even they actually want to go to court to enforce it, but it's enough to make companies pay. That's why I believe it's something abstract and only loosely connected to Microsoft's actual patents. And most other components of Android you could simple replace with other known non-infringing implementations, since Microsoft has also made these kinds of threats about Linux, these components are out there. But rewriting Davik is a much harder task without licensing tech from MS or Oracle. I would imagine RIM licenses Java. Everyone sues them for anything so if Oracle hasn't filed, they are licensed.

I think the root of the issue is Microsoft's possession of certain Virtual Machine, JIT, and native code generation patents it uses in the .NET runtime. My feeling is they believe Davik infringes on their patents. I don't think RIM or HP are using that type of technology in their OSes.

It's a Command and Conquer Reference

prior art, next case.

It has crashed my browser (Chrome) 3 times. Congrats.

And with a QWERTY phone they only beat the record by 23 seconds? Thats like giving a race horse crystal meth and having him win by a nose.