Timeline legal issues

Timeline is, apparently a company that had a patent for data warehousing. A number of companies licensed the technology. Microsoft did it in a way that was almost guaranteed to not cover customers who used SQL servers and did any coding of their own. Their message to Timeline: "If you don't like it, then sue our customers". That seems to be the direction that the company is going.

Timeline's apparent home page.
Microsoft's indemnification policy..
a summary of Microsoft's wilful exposure of their customers.
2003 News report in Theregister.co.uk.
A recent Groklaw note about timeline