June 2, 2010 - After Microsoft sued Salesforce.com for patent infringement, Salesforce's CEO Marc Benioff referred to the software giant using the familiar derogatory term "patent troll".
In a speech at a company conference in Singapore, Benioff said, “Patent trolls are part of the industry today, that's just the way it is. We've dealt with them before and we'll deal with this situation in the same exact way.”
Microsoft served the Software as a Service (SaaS) provider with the lawsuit in May claiming infringement of nine of the software giant's patents, which include a method of showing embedded menu tabs on web pages and the technology used to display tool bars on a computer system.