Somone on Slashdot.org made a comment

Someone on slashdot.org made a comment about what potentially could be infringing. The following comments were in response to that.
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I do not believe that NTFS and FAT drivers are included in the kernel. I understand any/all of these are additional facilities provided by other parties.

I don't think the amount of money would be enough to shut down any project. As the court has ruled that even tho Microsoft has violated numerous patents they have not been forced to stop using them and this isn't because they agreed to license them.

In the Z4 case they wanted to force Microsoft to cease using it which would have effectively shut down the activation process of Windows. Their attempt at getting an injunction was denied. This has happened numerous times since. It means the courts are forcing Microsoft to pay royalties and to license the product. Microsoft has stated, at least in the Z4 case, they will be modifying their product to not use the infringing IP.

As far as Vista goes. It is actually doing quite poorly overall. We'll see this in the next couple of quarters when all those special circumstances that they managed to get included in their financial statements could no longer apply. Any pro Vista sales numbers are really just being exaggerated to increase the stock value to address festering sores such as: employee benefits, shareholder value, etc. Microsoft is worried horribly about loosing their key players to other companies and the only way they can keep their stock pile of cash and continue to develop is to provide big stock options to the employees. If the stock stays flat as it has been for the past few years employees feel jilted by Microsoft and are more given to find other work.