On his blog, Florian Mueller is reporting that CPTN Holdings LLC, which acquired the Novell patents (or will when and if the sale closes), is owned by four industry heavyweights: "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"."
I feel a disturbance in the force... http://lwn.net/Articles/420177/rss