In the quoted source from the inventor -the inventor mentions his disbelief that Microsoft used the exact same parameters (that the inventor used ) as determined from the PC - I think things like MAC address etc to uniquely id the machine

That's part of what I meant "... steal the idea ..."

Of course, the comment that there are lots copy protection methods ( previously ) is correct

THe inventor also had to spend cira about $15M in legal fees to bring his case. ANd that is many years ago 15-20? so a much bigger $ today. A small company would have no chance to be able to afford such a financial outlay ... Microsoft was often accused of obtaining information under NDA then developing their own similar product etc One case I recall was PEN computing. Pen Computing lost their case with the result "not proven" There where many more such cases, similar from smaller companies. Of course how many that where valid is unknown , since the court case often not go ahead, since small company not have resources ....

Not listening to a blahcast, but shit like MAC addresses and other hardware IDs were well known to everyone in the field. Companies had 'inventory systems' which used this long before MS cared. I certainly don't begrudge anyone from getting their patented pound of flesh from Gates, just pointing out this is a great litmus test between the GNU and the not.