[Corpora-List] Microsoft patents verb conjugations

[Geoffrey Sampson]

Quoting Oliver Mason <O.Mason at bham.ac.uk>:

> Surely it must cost money to apply for patents, and this one should
> never be granted, so it'd just be a waste of time and money.

"Should never be granted" doesn't mean "will never be granted".  It is notorious that at 
present the US patent system is so overloaded that it is simply unable to do the checks 
it should and is frequently granting patents for processes that have been in routine use 
for years or decades.  To a large company, it is well worth the cost of gaining as many 
patents as it can for use in competitive tussles with other companies.

Geoffrey Sampson