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DOJ Limits Microsoft's Purchase of Novell Patents

Posted by samzenpus on from the not-so-fast dept.

itwbennett writes "Novell, distributor of the SUSE Linux OS, has agreed to change its proposed deal to sell patents to CPTN Holdings, a Microsoft-organized consortium of companies, in order to satisfy DOJ concerns about the impact on open-source software, the DOJ said. The agreement will require Microsoft to sell the Novell patents back to Attachmate and Microsoft will receive a license to use those patents and patents acquired by the other three owners of CPTN."

4 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. Should become a standard... by stating_the_obvious · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...at least until (if ever) the US PTO has a better solution to software patents. Now, MSFT (and consortium partners) are protected without limiting patent availability to the FOSS community. Sometimes win-win is more than a draw...

    1. Re:Should become a standard... by M.+Baranczak · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How can a patent be subject to the GPL? That doesn't make sense.

    2. Re:Should become a standard... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      afaik, if you license something, implementing one of your software patents, using gpl v3 you also grant users of your code the right to implement your patended idea. thus making the patent subject to the gpl v3.

  2. DOJ thinks open source is significant? by yuna49 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think that's the real headline here however the actual patents get worked out. I can't recall a decision from the Department of Justice, or indeed any Federal regulator, that expressed a concern about the impact of some private business decision on open source software.

    Here's a key line from TFA:
    "The patent sale, as originally proposed, would have jeopardized the ability of open source software to innovate and compete in middleware, virtualization, and server, desktop and mobile OS markets, the DOJ said."