Whatever part they patented, if anything of note, would have also been very narrow, given the history of interfaces with iconification of windows/"tasks" going

Whatever part they patented, if anything of note, would have also been very narrow, given the history of interfaces with iconification of windows/"tasks" going back at least a decade prior to Windows '95. Maybe making them textual or organizing them into a bar? It'd in any case have been trivial to work around given the number of alternatives with prior art.