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Apple, Microsoft and Oracle Make Friends To Buy Novell Patents

December 17, 2010 8:15 AM EST
AAPL Hot Sheet
Overall Analyst Rating:
    BUY (= Flat)

EPS Growth %: +92.2%
According to blog FOSS Patents, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has formed a joint venture with Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), EMC (NYSE: EMC), and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) for the acquisition of 882 Novell patents.

The joint venture, CPTN Holdings LLC, was disclosed by the German federal antitrust authority Bundeskartellamt.
The filing was made on December 9, 2010.

According to the blog author, "Within the consortium, the four players will have to agree on a common denominator concerning the patents to be acquired. They've apparently been able to agree that those patents are valuable assets to own."

AllThingsD says a source told them that the partnership was "an alliance of convenience." Specifically, “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 said. “It’s cheap defensive insurance.”

Novell was acquired earlier this year by Attachmate.


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