FSFE: Nortel/Rockstar and Google/Motorola deals

Karsten Gerloff, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe, warns that the approval of two deals involving large patent portfolios could cause problems for free software. The first deal, recently approved by the US Department of Justice (DoJ), involves the sale of Nortel's patent portfolio to a consortium led by Apple and Microsoft. The second deal involves the sale of Motorola Mobility patents to Google, which has been approved by both the DoJ and the European Commission. "'We appreciate that competition authorities in the US and Europe continue to take software patents seriously as a risk to competition,' says Karsten Gerloff, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe. 'However, we believe that the commitments made by Google, Microsoft and Apple regarding their patent licensing policies are not sufficient to allow everyone to compete on equal terms.'"

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