Good point
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BILL GATES
Up until then, software was written and shared freely. The idea of making money off of code was ridiculous. People wanted to sell computers and solutions, not code. Customers wanted stuff that just did what you told it to do, not code.
Today there are still people trying to figure a way to circumvent the GPL and other open-source licenses. It's utterly ridiculous. Software is literally super easy to make and distribute, almost zero cost. Nothing in the world is like it, and yet it is so expensive, why?
Software engineers are just glorified mechanics after all. It doesn't take a genius to figure out how stuff works or how to fix it when it doesn't work anymore.
The biggest examples do not involve Microsoft at all. The only case I know of was the MS vs Sun JavaScript / JScript but MS were the ones accused, as they have been in ever case I could find.
The significant code IP cases were:
AT&T claimed patent #4,555,775, issued to Rob Pike in 1985, covered the "backing store" functionality in MIT's X Window System and issued Cease & Desist letters to MIT.
MIT defended their position and eventually AT&T withdrew their claim.
UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. v. Berkeley Software Design, Inc. was the lawsuit brought in New Jersey federal court in 1992 by Unix System Laboratories against Berkeley Software Design, Inc and the Regents of the University of California.
This was the most famous computer code copyright lawsuit until the Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., 593 U.S. ___ (2021), which was a U.S. Supreme Court decision related to the nature of computer code and copyright law.