I'm curious how many people actually factor this into any due diligence for selecting technology for a project? How much weight do you give it? If I were to advise against using Azure, Windows, .NET because of patents charges for some Linux products I'm not sure my colleagues or clients would take me seriously. Yes, there are lots of reasons why you may not select MS tech, but patents seems a personal, political reason , which would be difficult to justify if you're trying to project it onto other people / organisations.

An approximately shared set of values and/or (business-relevant) political aims is a great advantage in working together.

This is definitely bad behavior from Microsoft that amounts to patent trolling, but that's still way better than the old Microsoft was. They weren't the only ones though, as any of the fancy patent lawsuit maps of the smartphone patent wars would show you.

Apple was notorious for suing Samsung of using the patented shape of a rectangle and while this was a misrepresentation of the way design patents work, most the patents they've used in their lawsuits were frivolous as well.