Analysis In rejecting Microsoft's appeal this week a European court has dealt a significant setback to Redmond's attempts to mount an attack on competitors based on intellectual property litigation. The decision by Judge Bo Vesterdorf at the European Court of the First Instance reveals for the first time many of the legal arguments that were made behind closed doors this year. The parts that interest us here are the decision itself, which rejects the idea that communication protocols are any kind of "trade secret" [*], and the slightly astonishing admission from Microsoft itself that suing people for IP violations is bothersome, or in its lawyers' own words: "a particularly complicated and inefficient exercise." If we're to take the lawyers at their word (always a risky business), then what has so often been described as a patent war between Redmond and open source developers looks much more like a phony war. Put the two together, and we have a much clearer idea of Microsoft's strategy than we did twelve months ago. We'll begin by examining the basis for Microsoft's appeal, or technically, its "application for interim measures".