Well, this is almost certainly not the Novell patent deal that Microsoft and its CPTN Holding Partners-Apple, EMC and Oracle-wanted . The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced today, April 20th, that in order to proceed with the first phase of their acquisition of certain patents and patent applications from Novell, CPTN Holdings has altered their original agreements to address the department’s antitrust concerns. In particular, “The department said that, as originally proposed, the deal would jeopardize the ability of open source software, such as Linux, to continue to innovate and compete in the development and distribution of server, desktop, and mobile operating systems, middleware, and virtualization products. Although the department will allow the transaction to proceed, it will continue investigating the distribution of the Novell patent to the CPTN owners.”

More >