[anamax]

I tend to downvote posts if the author complains about being downvoted.

Also, not only were you "long on slogans and short on insight" but your argument doesn't fly. (IBM usually keeps the patents of the companies that it buys.)

[rbanffy]

I was speculating on what would happen if Microsoft bought Sun and decided to port Windows to SPARC.

IBM would want to keep the patents for itself, but Microsoft would probably wrap them in a do-not-hit-us term and sell them to trolls. This way they could undermine the competition while staying completely out of it.

[anamax]

> Microsoft would probably wrap them in a do-not-hit-us term and sell them to trolls.

Oh really? How about some supporting evidence?

The best evidence would include examples. After all, Microsoft buys companies all the time. If this is something that Microsoft will "probably" do, surely they've done it several times before.