I'm not sure how many of you remember, but 15-20 years ago, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari web browsers were not around. The two big browsers at the time were Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator; Opera was Mac only and didn't have the popularity it had back then. At the the time, AOL (the once popular dial-up internet service provider) bought out Netscape Navigator and all of the patents associated with the program. Netscape would live on as the basis for what is now known as Firefox.
Anyway Microsoft just made a HUGE move today and agreed to buy out over 800 patents from AOL, INCLUDING all of the Netscape Navigator patents. We are talking about all of the SSL patents, Javascript (which was originally created for the Netscape browser), cookies, etc. Netscape, and later AOL said they would never charge for patent use, but with Microsoft now owning all of the old Netscape patents, there is no telling if companies such as Apple, Mazilla, etc would have to charge to use the patents or even if Microsoft is going to force changes to them.
GRANTED the patent deal has to go through the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) before it's approved but be ready for some serious backlash.
https://www.zdnet.com/blog/networkin...t;feature-roto
https://allthingsd.com/20120409/atte...t-of-netscape/