With copyright, you must show the original work and prove it came before the alleged copy. Your description of a crime in post #24 is a description of proving copyright infringement--not patent violation.
You are trying too hard ~ sometimes the lines blur. In this case the “operating instructions that make a machine operate” could differ, but it’s the operation of the machine that makes the difference ~ but that wasn’t the point I was making anyway. Whatever the standards of evidence might be in a court of law, I suggested that the items Microsoft is complaining about might well be code for code IDENTICAL ~ and that would satisfy all of us that there could have been some hanky-panky (although probably not a court of law if it had a different standard).