[ Thanks to Steven J.
Vaughan-Nichols for this link. ]
“When CPTN Holdings appeared out of the blue to snap up
Novell’s patent portfolio, the only thing anyone knew about them
was that Microsoft was behind the group and that’s all Microsoft
had to say about its Novell intellectual property (IP) purchase.
Now, thanks to Germany’s anti-trust body, the Bundeskartellamt, we
know that Microsoft’s CPTN Holdings partners were Apple, EMC, and
Oracle.“As my buddy Mary Jo Foley pointed out, this means that “CPTN
Holdings isn’t just a front for Microsoft.” It’s easy, of course,
to see why Microsoft would want Novell’s IP. While we don’t exactly
what patents came with this deal, we do know that Novell owns
significant networking, directory, virtualization and data center
patents”