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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."

11 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 icebike · · Score: 2

      According to the agreement,

      In addition, all of the Novell patents will be subject to the GNU General Public License, Version 2 and the Open Invention Network (OIN) License, a significant license in Linux, the DOJ said. CPTN will not have the right to limit which of the patents are available under the OIN license, and CPTN and its owners will be prohibited from encouraging Novell or Attachmate to modify which patents are available under the OIN license, the DOJ said.

      So what exactly is MSFT and CPTN buying here?

      I suspect that they will get a license PRIOR to it being subject to the GPL2, and may work to allow them to use these unencumbered by the GPL. Otherwise, there is exactly zero value to these patents because they could gain access via the GPL.

      Microsoft abhors GPL code in anything they put into windows itself (they still do use some GPL items). So obtaining a license that was not GPL encumbered might still be worth while to them.

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    2. 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.

    3. 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.

    4. Re:Should become a standard... by man_of_mr_e · · Score: 2

      More importantly, how does this affect other open source projects that are not GPL based? Can *BSD's use them?

      Remember, the term "viral license" was not coined by Microsoft, but rather BSD proponents.

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    5. Re:Should become a standard... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      I suspect that they will get a license PRIOR to it being subject to the GPL2, and may work to allow them to use these unencumbered by the GPL.

      There can be multiple licenses for a single patent. There's not need for it to be "prior" it is simply an additional license.

  2. Re:Open Invention Network by icebike · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They will. Read TFA.

    Microsoft is essentially getting a slurp of the licenses before the OIN or GPLv2 gets its hands on them. The get all the advantages of OIN membership without giving anything back.

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  3. OT: IT World Distractions by pavon · · Score: 4, Informative

    WTF is that damn auto-updating twitterish piece of shit beside the article? It's like they are actively trying to make their site as hard to read as possible. It's worse than most advertisements. Please don't ever link to this website again.

    In the meanwhile here is a non-ADD version of the article.

  4. 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."

    1. Re:DOJ thinks open source is significant? by dave562 · · Score: 2

      Believe it or not, the DoJ is actually pretty savvy when it comes to technical issues. They went over Cisco's acquisition of Tandberg with a fine toothed comb. It is next to impossible to do any sort of M&A activity in the technology sector without drawing some sort of scrutiny from the DoJ.

  5. ummm, no. by novar21 · · Score: 2

    There are many more patents that are in the OIN portfolio than what M$ is getting a license to. M$ will not be able to use any OIN patents against anyone belonging to OIN, or against someone using GPLed software. Novell has been a member of OIN, so those patents that M$ is buying are already licensed to OIN. OIN has nothing to fear from these patents. The position now is that M$ also has nothing to fear about these patents. Other patents that OIN has can still be used against M$. But I am not a lawyer. And this is not legal advice.