I expect that MS copyrighted, not patented, it. You can't patent a name, so that change couldn't help them patent it.
This is the first I heard of them doing anything beyond changing the name, so I don't know. Perhaps they patented it also. Misnamed and ill-behaved programs are sufficient to anger me, no intellectual property required.
I am accustomed to output from ifconfig and route, so not real interested in having it snipped and formatted to look like Windows output.