 Microsoft, for example, has agreements with IBM, Sun (now Oracle), SAP, Hewlett-Packard, Siemens, Cisco, Autodesk, and recently Novell.Microsoft cross-licensed its patents with Sun, despite being direct competitors, and with Autodesk even though Autodesk has far fewer patents than Microsoft.The ability to negotiate cross licensing agreements is a major reason that many software companies, including those providing open source software, file patents.