what had that college patented? i dont understand at all. how can you patent not clicking on things? i tried to read the article and found that i was much too tired and lazy. it was a boring article. somebody that knows whats going on please fill me in.

Get a clue and stop using Internet Explorer. As has been repeatedly repreated here in this thread, Firefox doesn't have this issue. Never has, never will.

FOR INSTANCE.. when I'm typing on a message board, I can use search in ie to search within my own post (for instance, I could search for the word "typing" while still writing this post). ie will find it.. firefox won't.

Two things:

1) Chill the heck out.

2) If Eolas sued Mozilla Corp. and won, as they did against Microsoft, Firefox would (out of the box, at least) have the exact same issue, so your "never has, never will" prediction is, unfortunately, not a bet I would put money on. So far Firefox is under the radar--or maybe someone at Eolas has a soft spot for open source--but it won't remain that way forever and you shouldn't take it for granted.

Except there's a reason Eolas didn't sue Mozilla. Namely, none of Mozilla's code infringes on Eoal's copyright.

The case was a patent dispute, not a copyright dispute. It has nothing to do with code. Eolas never accused Microsoft of using or otherwise infringing on any of its code. It accused Microsoft of using the user interface concepts that it patented. Firefox uses the same concepts Internet Explorer did, and is just as valid a target for a patent lawsuit. You will perhaps find the Wikipedia article enlightening.