The Department of Justice outlined on Wednesday steps that CPTN
Holdings LLC has agreed to take in order to acquire some patents
and patent applications from Novell Inc. (NOVL), which is in the
process of being bought by a trio of private-equity firms operating
as Attachmate Corp.
The Justice Department said that in order to address antitrust
concerns, CPTN--a holding company owned by Microsoft Inc. (MSFT),
Oracle Corp. (ORCL), Apple Inc. (AAPL) and EMC Corp. (EMC)--revised
its agreements to buy the patents in several ways.
Among the revisions, Microsoft will sell back to Attachmate all
of the Novell patents it would have bought, but it will continue to
receive a license for the use of those patents; EMC won't acquire
33 Novell patents and applications that are related to
virtualization software; all of the patents acquired will be
subject to the GNU General Public License and the Open Invention
Network--open-source and Linux licenses, respectively; CPTN won't
have the right to limit which of the patents are available on the
Linux license; and CPTN and its owners won't try to infuence or
encourage Novell or Attachmate to change which of the patents are
available under the Linux license.
The regulator said the deal as originally proposed would have
jeopardized the ability of open source software, like Linux, to
continue competing in the development of server, desktop, and
mobile operating systems.
Novell in November agreed to be taken over by a group of
private-equity firms for about $2.2 billion, ending an eight-month
battle for the software company. The three firms that make up
Attachmate are Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital and Thoma
Bravo LLC.
-By Nathan Becker, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2855;
nathan.becker@dowjones.com