As information increases, and businesses pop out faster than the eye can see, patents are following the way of DRM, being more painful than useful, often wrongly used.
Patents are no longer a valid way to protect one's business,and become an obstacle in progress.
If tsera truly owns the patent, it also needs to prove that the devices MS makes, are causing tsera to lose customers. Not because of a better design on MS'sside, but because of the touchpad.
I think there are just too many people blocking progress by patenting all kinds of ideas that they never use, or perhaps where they want to get part of the money a big company will be making off this idea.
If this was true, I'd be rewarded for bringing ideas to AMD for automatically adjusting FSAA when fps go higher than 60fps, and I'd get a share for bringing the idea to intel that lead to the production of the Atom processor.
I just know nothing about patents, and even if I did, I have no way of creating things like that. One needs engineers for that!
Instead, I believe it's only fair to give a thank you to the company that gave you the idea to start out with, (eg a graphics card for ATI, or an atom processor powered device for Intel).
But I don't believe in ripping companies off.
If MS doesn't think it got it's ideas from tsera, then leave them alone!
Patent infringement! Nowadays even artists are patenting phrases in songs, that one is not allowed to copy!
What is that?