The Microsoft-created features protected by the patents infringed by the Nook and Nook Color tablet are core to the user experience. For example, the patents we asserted today protect innovations that:
• Give people easy ways to navigate through information provided by their device apps via a separate control window with tabs;
• Enable display of a webpage’s content before the background image is received, allowing users to interact with the page faster;
• Allow apps to superimpose download status on top of the downloading content;
• Permit users to easily select text in a document and adjust that selection; and
• Provide users the ability to annotate text without changing the underlying document.
And here's a list of patents from a lawsuit against Mororola [4] (the first two concern FAT16 I believe):
5,579,517: Common name space for long and short filenames
5,758,352: Common name space for long and short filenames (yes, again)
6,621,746: Monitoring entropic conditions of a flash memory device as an indicator for invoking erasure operations
6,826,762: Radio interface layer in a cell phone with a set of APIs having a hardware-independent proxy layer and a hardware-specific driver layer
6,909,910: Method and system for managing changes to a contact database
7,644,376: Flexible architecture for notifying applications of state changes
5,664,133: Context sensitive menu system/menu behavior
6,578,054: Method and system for supporting off-line mode of operation and synchronization using resource state information
6,370,566: Generating meeting requests and group scheduling from a mobile device
As for your questions: So why is it wrong for them to put a claim on it? Wouldn't Apple do the same? It's not like Apple gets a free pass when they sue Android manufacturers for patent infringement...
[1] http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues/archive/2...
[2] http://androidcommunity.com/barnes-noble-reveals-microsofts-...
[3] http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2011111122291296
[4] http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/10/01/microsoft-files-itc-p...