Esta es la historia rocambolesca contada por Groklaw: Microsoft patentó anteayer el comando sudo gracias al despiste o la ignorancia (o una suma de ambos) de la UPSTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office), que no se preocuó ni siquiera de consultar la Wikipedia, que en su artículo dedicado a sumo aclara que es un comando para otorgar privilegios de superusuario que forma parte de los sistemas UNIX, aunque “Windows has a command runas which has similar functionality”
Microsoft ha conseguido la patente 7,617,530 por este invento: “Systems and/or methods are described that enable a user to elevate his or her rights. In one embodiment, these systems and/or methods present a user interface identifying an account having a right to permit a task in response to the task being prohibited based on a user’s current account not having that right”