Costs passed on to buyers of software

Per copy of MS Windows: US$20 for patents

This section discusses a document which is available at:
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2007/patent-tax.html

From a study performed by Software Freedom Law Center:

If you run a computer using Windows, you're not just paying for the programmers who put the program together and the corporate operations that brought it to market. You're also paying a hidden tax of well over $20 that Microsoft has had to pay to other patent holders. This is true whether you bought your copy of Windows on CD or pre-installed on a laptop, desktop, or server machine.