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Microsoft-Organized Consortium Buying Novell Patents Are Apple, Oracle, MS, and EMC

By Pamela Jones et al.

It's being reported on MacRumors that the members of the consortium put together by Microsoft to buy the 882 patents from Novell are Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, and EMC:

Breaking news: Twitter user @VM_gville just pointed me to the website of the German federal antitrust authority ("Bundeskartellamt"), which discloses a merger (or more precisely, joint venture) notification filed a week ago (on 09 December 2010), according to which the four companies behind CPTN Holdings LLC -- the acquirer of 882 Novell patents -- are Microsoft, Apple, EMC, and Oracle. The product market in which the newly formed company plans to operate is defined as "patents"

Here's the page where you can see the notation on the Bundeskartellamt website:

09.12.2010 - B5-148/10 - Unternehmen:

Microsoft, Apple, EMC u. Oracle / CPTN Holdings LLC (Anteilserw.+GU-Gründung)

Produktmärkte: Patente

So what's the common interest? "Let's all kill Android"? Of course there could be more than one theme, virtualization, office suites.

Full post as published by Groklaw on December 16, 2010 (boomark / email).