Boycott Caller ID for E-mail?

I was looking around for more info on spam/joe-job prevention and I came across a site proposing a boycott of Microsoft's Caller ID for E-mail technology.  The page raises some interesting points - mostly about why Microsoft has filed patents on what they want to be a core Internet technology. 

Unfortunately, with their track record, I'm not certain that I can trust them with holding all the cards.  If the patents really are defensive, why don't they assign the patents over to the IETF and remove that silly patent attribution clause that prevents interoperability with some open-source licenses?