OTOH, patents apparently did nothing to prevent Excel's rise to the top when there was Lotus 1-2-3 and in fact Visicalc before; MS Excel starting life on Mac OS, and MS only providing Multiplan on DOS (and CP/M?) which was seen as a budget alternative to 1-2-3.
I'm not sure what patents might have been in place at the time Excel came around. In any case, large wealthy companies such as Microsoft are better equipped to deal with the looming threat posed by software patents (or even actual patent-based lawsuits.) Software patents seem particular noxious to smaller software development companies that are more vulnerable to being shut down by a shakedown.
