Microsoft, Apple part out Novell patents
It would seem that the two Steves — Ballmer and Jobs — have more in common than we thought. A consortium of companies led by Microsoft that includes the Cupertino, California-based Mac, iPad, iPhone and iPod maker has purchased a big chunk o’ intellectual property.
Novell recent sold itself to Attachmate for $2.2 billion. And, according to Ars Technica, they also sold 882 patents to CPTN Holdings, a consortium of companies that includes Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Oracle.
The joint acquisition of these patents may be believed to put the four companies in stronger positions either offensively or defensively against current or future patent disputes. It should be noted that lawsuits from Apple, Oracle, and Microsoft all target Google’s Android mobile operating system, which may explain why four large companies banded together to acquire the patents.
So, they’re all ganging up on Google? Well, perhaps.
Thereupon, Apple and a host of others, including searchzilla, are attempting Nortel’s patents, which went bankrupt while holding hundreds wireless patents.
With so much intellectual property changing hands or about to, you’ve gotta wonder what effect it will have on the highly litigious smartphone segment where Apple’s been sued by and in turn is suing pretty much all of the major players…
What’s your take?
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December 20th, 2010
Patents, and especially software patents, are the remainders of another millennium when protecting your business was associated with preventing others to be able to produce the same thing as you did … which has an heavy drawback to the entire humanity: it extremely slows down general products evolution as the wheel must be reinvented all the time if you want to use it as a building block to create another product …