Here's a way to spend Microsoft's multi-billion-dollar cash hoard -- pay it out to competitors that Microsoft has attempted to steamroll in the past decade. Today, Microsoft agreed to pay IBM $775 million to resolve antitrust claims that grew out of the U.S. government's lawsuit in the 1990s. Over the past two years, Microsoft has spent more than $3.8 billion to settle antitrust claims brought by customers and rivals. Despite the huge payouts, analysts and investors are actually kinda jazzed -- they see the moves by Microsoft as a sign that the software giant is putting its regulatory headaches behind it once and for all. Clean slate and all that.