It's hard to imagine that anything MSFT does with patents is going to damage its reputation any more than the '90s already have. Unisys was hurt because before the GIF debacle, nobody knew who they were, and after it they were a comic book supervillain. Fairly or not, Microsoft is already the Lex Luthor of software.
But it could kill MSFT's attempt to enter this market slice.
Everyone will run from MSFT like vampires from sunlight, and MSFT will never be a significant player in the GPS market.
Perhaps the whole device market!
If a free alternative that won't get you sued is available, would you touch MSFT?
I think the biggest risk for MSFT is purely reputation. Their reputation has got worse and worse and I believe you're right, it's going to start damaging their ability to enter any market other than computers and games consoles (and only there because they actually have a good reputation).
I don't trust MSFT's reliability with products. I've even noticed some classic MSFT flaws in the Xbox 360, namely that it tells you somethings wrong with how you set up the Xbox when it cannot connect to Live, yet if you actually watch the connection steps it connects to the network, connects to the internet and gets 2/3 the way through connecting to MSFT's Live and then it fails, yet they blame you. This reminds me of Live Messenger, when the service goes down for everyone (including articles on ZDNet and places about the outage) you check the service and it always says that the Live systems are running without a problem. I still can't understand why MSFT simply never admits there's a problem; IMO it hurts their reputation a lot more that they don't than if they did.
Honestly, I find myself looking at the apple website, watching the prices of all their products. Because once there's a good enough deal, or I have enough cash to spare (whichever comes first) then I'm getting one. With my wifes' education discount some of the prices are dangerously close to a good deal as it pretty much becomes tax free, in fact I think some save more.
I know for myself that a combination of recent years and getting over my Linux-fanboyness has caused me to move Microsoft from ultimate evil to just annoying big company. This lawsuit severly pushes that back.
It also makes the people who faught against things like the Novell-Microsoft Deal appear correct. This in turn does great damage to the Silverlight and C# OSS efforts. Which in turn does damage to Microsofts ability to say they are cross platform.
What you say is true enough for geeks with an interest in such things, but the wider world has a much shorter memory. A certain type of person, very common unfortunately, feels safe and comforted by the idea of using MS anywhere they possibly can. For them, it's a question of "yes, but what have they done that's bad .. lately?".
This case could supply that. And it's a nice talking point for any debate about OOXML or even mono. Suddenly attacking companies that had foolishly relied on a decade-old Microsoft-supplied "industry standard" certainly makes their new efforts at establishing "standards" easier to undermine. Even the most rabid MS Fanboy will have difficulty claiming, with a straight face, that FAT32 is some kind of proprietary high technology that deserves patent protection.
Plenty of downside for MS on this one. I wonder what the rank and file employees think of it.
