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FSF and OSI Join to Ask US DOJ and German Federal Cartel Office to Investigate CTPN Deal

By Pamela Jones et al.

FSF has joined OSI in filing a request [PDF] with both the US Department of Justice and the German Federal Cartel Office that each investigate the proposed sale of Novell patents to the Microsoft-organized group CPTN, "thoroughly investigating the facts and evidence concerning this transaction, rather than giving them the benefit of the commercial doubt."

This means the original OSI filing in December has now been updated with this January filing, to reflect that FSF now joins OSI in expressing concerns about this secretive deal:

We urge the Department of Justice to recognize the significance of FLOSS and to investigate the threat posed to it by the CPTN transaction.

It also means that the EU Commission's answer to a question on January 17 that "on the basis of the information currently available at this stage" it seemed unlikely the deal "requires a notification to the Commission under the Merger Regulation" or that "the mere acquisition of the patents in question by CPTN Holdings would lead to an infringement of EU competition rules" came prior to this renewed filing, which was filed not with the EU Commission anyhow but with the German Federal Cartel Office. That is who will decide the matter there, and the US DOJ will consider the matter in the US. No one has filed a complaint with the EU Commission that I know of, not that it couldn't happen. There is a lot of subtle FUD in the air from the usual suspects, if I might say so.

Hopefully other companies and entities will express their concerns as well.

Full post as published by Groklaw on January 20, 2011 (boomark / email).