It's being
reported on MacRumors that the members of the consortium put together by Microsoft to buy the 882 patents from Novell are Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, and EMC:
Breaking news: 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"
Here's the page where you can see
the notation on the Bundeskartellamt website:
09.12.2010 - B5-148/10 - Unternehmen:
Microsoft, Apple, EMC u. Oracle / CPTN Holdings LLC (Anteilserw.+GU-Gründung)
Produktmärkte: Patente
So what's the common interest? "Let's all kill Android"? There's a limit on that, in that Google is also an Open Invention Network member, so it has a license to these Novell patents already. Of course there could be more than one theme, virtualization, office suites.
More...
