The fact that Microsoft is involved in yet another patent-related lawsuit is quite yesterday's news. And it's not the first time that the company from Redmond has been accused of appropriating some technologies through not quite legal means either.

The problem this time is that Jerrold Kaplan, founder of Go Corporation, one of the pioneers of Tablet PCs, is unearthing a 20-year old story, claiming that Microsoft has gotten hold of some technologies from Go Corporation and has determined several companies to reject the innovations proposed by Kaplan's.

For the readers that don't know exactly who Go Corporation and Jerrold Kaplan are, some more information is available here.

Why is Kaplan coming back with these allegations after 20 years? According to his statement in an interview from last year, Kaplan has found out by following the course of another lawsuit that Microsoft would have allegedly tried to block the adoption of Go's portable system by other companies.

What's strange is that these accusations emerge in a period when the Tablet PC, which Microsoft has struggled to impose, with no visible effect in sales figures, seems to have been resuscitated.

Recently, Lenovo has launched a new Tablet PC http://news.softpedia.com/news/Lenovo-is-ready-to-launch-ThinkPad-X41-2727.shtml which may represent a new beginning for this type of equipments. On the other hand, it's very likely that one of the objectives of the recent agreement between Microsoft and Toshiba is the development of some new Tablet PCs.

So the unveiling of a story that took place at the beginning of the '90s seems to have some other purpose than the simple idea of justice. Maybe Microsoft is not always doing things in the most appropriate manner, but it has something more important to do than to be harassed over something that it has done over 20 years ago.