Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I only went about 98% of the way through law school (I decided I'd rather be a programmer who knew a fair amount of law than a lawyer who knew a lot about programming, and never got around to completing a paper for my last class). I did get a close look at the whole patent suit process later, when a patent that I am a co-inventor on ended up involved in a lawsuit (not of my choice or with my approval), so I got to be deposed a couple times, answer a lot of questions from lawyers, and spend a month living in an annoying hotel in Texas for the trial, and while there got to talk a lot with the lawyers. If an actual lawyer steps in here to answer, take whatever they say over whatever I say.

OK, now that the disclaimer is done (and is longer than my answer, which will probably make people doubt my claim to not be a lawyer!), it looks to me like your take is accurate. Their answer does not give much detail.

Your speculation in the last paragraph, that this is normal for answers to complaints, is also correct I believe. The complaint and answer are not where the parties start to argue the case. The complaint is to tell the court what wrong you think was done to you, and why you think the court has jurisdiction over the defendant and over the subject matter.

The answer is to tell the court which things in the complaint that you concede are true, which you claim are false, and which you cannot answer at this time because you do not have enough information.

Basically, the complaint and answer together let the court know what it is dealing with.

The meaty details start coming in when the suit gets to the stage where the parties are filing pre-trial motions for things like summary judgement on various parts of the complaint, and later when the trial actually gets underway.

Ahh, that is very helpful, thanks. So my evaluation of their answer was premature, but I guess no more premature than those who would take it as an indication that "B&N sure showed Microsoft".