We’re not talking about just one patent that Microsoft filed and forgot about. We’re talking about TWELVE patents that Billy Gates applied for that indicate that a Zune Phone could very seriously be in the cards. While Microsoft has not confirmed the existence of the ZunePhone, they haven’t outright denied it either. They’re skirting the issue.

In terms of what patents were dug up, we find patents that describe speech filtering, an on-screen keyboard, capacitance touch slider, contact display, a thin flip phone design, and something about a remotely controlling a media device.