Patents Nightmares, Sometimes There Are Good Dreams!

Today I was reading about M$, Apple and others attempt to thwart Android, not with innovation but by acquiring patents and suing the manufactures of Android phones, as much as $15 per device.

Then I read about the Novel Patent portfolio saga (old news actually), how the CPTN, (M$ + Oracle +Apple + EMC) which was a cover company for those big boys who was hell bent on getting to patents and sharing among the four of them, changed agreements to address the concerns of DOJ. If the patents were to be shared by these four companies, Linux had no where to go but underground. Thanks DOJ;

In order to address competition concerns of the department, CPTN and its owners have revised their agreements to provide that:

· Microsoft will sell back to Attachmate all of the Novell patents that Microsoft would have otherwise acquired, but will continue to receive a license for the use of those patents, the patents acquired by the other three participants and any patents retained by Novell;

· EMC will not acquire 33 Novell patents and patent applications that have been identified as related to virtualization software;

· All of the Novell patents will be acquired subject to the GNU General Public License, Version 2, a widely adopted open-source license, and the Open Invention Network (OIN) License, a significant license for the Linux System;

· CPTN does not have the right to limit which of the patents, if any, are available under the OIN license; and

· Neither CPTN nor its owners will make any statement or take any action with the purpose of influencing or encouraging either Novell or Attachmate to modify which of the patents are available under the OIN license.

Department of Justice :

Official Google Blog: When patents attack Android