Look at the Assignee... (Score 1)

From the patent office's link to the patent the assignee is "The Regents of the University of California (Oakland, CA)".

Hmmm... They say in their about page that they were spun off of the university, but it doesn't look like they officially changed ownership of the patent.

I can't see the University of California turning down a $1 billion dollar donation any more than Sun would.

Assuming this research outfit has unrestricted ownership of the patent, I think they would have a hard time turning down a number that had as many zeros in it as a billion. Then where would we be? Microsoft would have a more difficult time exploiting a purchase of this patent because of their obvious monopoly problems, but there are a couple of things they could probably do to attack open source software.

Lets say that Microsoft purchases this patent and agrees to license this "fairly" to all comers as long as all users respect their digital rights management initiatives or place some other speed bump to open source browsers or browsers on open source platforms.

Eolas's thought exercise of not allowing IE to use their "technology" is probably just posturing for a better settlement and the judgment will come down to money in the end... Something that Microsoft has plenty of.

The best case could be that the patent is overturned and drops into the public domain. Then there will not be a private interest that would control what is becoming an important part of the browser experience.