Novell's Patents Are Complicating Its Sale (GigaOm)

Matt Asay ponders the role of Novell's patents in the sale of the company. "This is why Red Hat has remained interested in Novell, despite a lack of competitive threat from SUSE. At all. In a world of rough-and-tumble patent litigation, Red Hat can't continue to bring vague rally-the-troops, anti-patent jingoism to a knife fight. Yes, it has done well to support the Open Invention Network and other patent collectives, but having its own defensive patent war chest would go a long way toward securing its thriving Linux, virtualization, and middleware businesses from latent patent suits."

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