Many people says that in US you can patent anything if you're the first applying the patent even if there are people that implementing the idea before, so you can patent how people shake hands or patent the corn for use as seed, or rice for use in candies or even the way to drink a water glass. Well, there is some stories about some chem-lab that patented native knowledge like the use of some plants as pain-killers, so they comercialized something that at first place was obvious just because they filled the papers first, and a company that patented a muted cow.

Only the way its done, not an algorithm or something tangible?, just for implementing an idea?, so they're suing because they think Microsoft and Autodesk and many other companies made some "reverse engineering" of their software to get the way they implemented licensing security(wait, there's not even a software?). What about Macrovision and their floating licensing service, UniGraphics and their SolidEdge product uses that way for licensing since so many years, you get an installation ID you send it to them and after a month they give you a limited licensing code that activates the product for a limited time.