CPTN, a consortium set up by Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and EMC to acquire hundreds of Novell patents, appears to have inadvertently faked out the open source community by withdrawing its proposal from the German Federal Cartel Office. News reports on Tuesday noted the event and alluded to possible success of the lobbying efforts by such organizations as the American Open Source Initiative and Free Software Foundation Europe to reject the proposal. However Microsoft, a key member of CPTN, subsequently said the withdrawal of the proposal was strictly a procedural move.
it seems to me that patents whose rights have been reassigned from the original applicant/inventor should entail a different set of rules. the classic inventor patent is being pushed out by submarines, trolls, etc, and the actual innovator (in the event something actually patentable is described) is at risk of losing his invention to a corporation with a bank of attorneys.
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FOSS Hopes for Novell Patents Spark, Then Quickly Fade
Posted by: Erika Morphy January 12, 2011 10:52 AMCPTN, a consortium set up by Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and EMC to acquire hundreds of Novell patents, appears to have inadvertently faked out the open source community by withdrawing its proposal from the German Federal Cartel Office. News reports on Tuesday noted the event and alluded to possible success of the lobbying efforts by such organizations as the American Open Source Initiative and Free Software Foundation Europe to reject the proposal. However Microsoft, a key member of CPTN, subsequently said the withdrawal of the proposal was strictly a procedural move.