As for the patent, it doesn't seem all that chromeos specific, actually. For instance, the claims are very focused on an OS that is or can be stored server-side, with the client fetching an image from the server (that includes the user's preferences?) on startup and dumping it again at shutdown. The patent process tends to make ideas more generic as they are recorded, but even a generous interpretation of this doesn't really cover chromeos or the OS he described in the blog post (at least the part he most emphasized, the idea of keeping everything in RAM). ChromeOS doesn't get OS updates that differently than other operating systems (and certainly not as new images every time it connects to the update server), and the preferences sync system stands totally separate from the rest. This doesn't invalidate the blog post, but I don't really think the patent backs up the specific claim of "inventing chromebook".