タブブラウザのパテント

Microsoft (Quote, Chart) has been granted a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on a process known as tabbing through a Web page in order to find links.
Although the patent award has raised the ire of some in the open source browser community, the implications for the widely used technique are unclear.
The patent (number 6,785,865) is officially titled "Discoverability and navigation of hyperlinks via tabs."
Microsoft filed for the patent in March of 1997. It covers the process of shifting between links on a Web page using the computer's tab button.
According to the U.S. Patent office, a "user may discover and navigate among hyperlinks through the use of a keyboard. For example, a user may press a tab key to discover and navigate to a first hyperlink that is part of a hypertext document."

よくわからんのだけど、1997年からもめていた「Tabbed Browsing」特許でマイクロソフトが勝ったもより。
ってことはなにかい。IEがデフォルトでタブブラウザ化される日も近いということ？　あるいはMozillaだのOperaだのLynxだのw3mだの、現行のタブブラウザは特許料をマイクロソフトに徴収される可能性もあるということ？
誰かきちんと英文のわかる方は教えてくださいまし。