FSFE concerned about Novell patent sale
Free Software Foundation Europe has written to the German competition authorities in order to share its concerns about the sale of Novell's patents to a consortium called CPTN, made up of Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and EMC.
"If the sale of Novell’s patents to CPTN is allowed to go ahead, this will significantly increase the legal threat level for Free Software", says FSFE's President Karsten Gerloff in an article on the issue.
On December 22, 2010, FSFE wrote to the German competition authorities with a detailed explanation of the negative effect that the acquisition of Novell's patents by CPTN would have for competition in the software market.
"This case is yet another demonstration of how software patents make life difficult for everyone in the software market", Gerloff says. "And it provides yet another reason to continue FSFE's long-standing work against software patents.