Windows APIs govern everything from how memory is allocated to when applications windows can be displayed on the screen. 

While this Windows API control may work well across many applications and many scenarios, developers often find the need to change these controls for a specific application or a specific scenario. 

Detours provides the mechanisms to allow developers more flexibility by intercepting and modifying some system behavior at the API boundary.

• For example, you can use Detours to enforce web browser behavior to allow only the current browser tab to pop up new Windows. 
• Other uses of Detours have included a system that changes the policy for how COM objects were allocated between a collection of computers and a system that changes registry access policy so that application do not overwrite local registry settings. 
• Software developers can use Detours to create an automatic distributed partitioning system.
• Developers and architects can use this technology to instrument and analyze the DCOM protocol stack, and to create a thinking layer for a COM-based OS API.

Detours is available for commercial use with 32-bit and 64-bit applications via a simple licensing process here.

There are many more research technologies, protocols and components easily licensed from Microsoft. Visit the Microsoft Intellectual Property licensing site here.