Microsoft, Novell, and "Clone Product" Lawsuits

El_Oscuro writes "The MS/Novell deal specifically excludes patent protection for "clone products." In the agreement, a clone product is broadly defined as "a product (or major component thereof) of a Party that has the same or substantially the same features and functionality as a then-existing product (or major component thereof) of the other Party ... and that has the same or substantially the same user interface, or implements all or substantially all of the Application Programming Interfaces of the Prior Product." The text of the clone product definition subsections is very cumbersome to read, but it specifically mentions OpenOffice, Wine, and OpenXchange by name without asserting that they are necessarily clone products."

Comments

Re:the word they're looking for

[fluffy99]

So they can still sue the crap out of Novell if they include Open Office or Evolution with their Linux? Afterall they ae clones of Office and Outlook. Hell, most of the good Linux software is a clone of a better commercial product.