I had read in a magazine about industrial patents that MS has a team of lawyers & engineers whose sole purpose is to patent anything they can think of. The reasoning is, that if they own the silly patents, they won't have to defend against them later. Given the insanity of the US patent office, it seems a reasonable course. This just may be one of those patents...

I designed the first "dry deck" fountain (the kind kids play in) over 20 years ago. I found out recently that one of my competitors patented it two years later... it never occured to me to patent it...