Friday, December 17, 2010

Apple, Oracle, EMC Take Part in Novell Patent Grab | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD

Interesting IP times

Because while companies do sometimes ally to pool patent rights, this seems an…unusual alliance. Why are these patents–which presumably cover networking, virtualization and data center technologies–important enough that Microsoft, EMC, Oracle and Apple would create an LLC to acquire and cross-license them? That’s not entirely clear, though a source inside one of the four companies tells me it was essentially an alliance of convenience.

“We get to buy in at a cheap price and get a license to a very valuable portfolio,” a source inside one of the four companies told me. “It’s cheap defensive insurance.”

Apple, Oracle, EMC Take Part in Novell Patent Grab | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD

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