CPTN Holdings LLC is a

consortium A consortium () is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations, or governments (or any combination of these entities) with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a ...

of technology companies led by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

that acquired a portfolio of 882

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

s as part of the sale of

Novell Novell, Inc. () was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as NetWare. Novell technolog ...

Attachmate Attachmate Corporation is a 1982-founded software company which focused on secure terminal emulation, legacy integration, and managed file transfer software. Citrix-compatibility and Attachment ''Reflection'' were enhanced/added offerings. His ...

. As of December 2010, CPTN's members are believed to be

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...

Oracle An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...

and

EMC Corporation EMC Corporation (stylized as EMC²) was an American multinational corporation headquartered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, which sold data storage device, data storage, information security, virtualization, analytics, cloud computing and other pro ...

. It was later reported that the Rücknahme, the filing with the German Federal Cartel Office by the principals of CPTN Holdings was withdrawn on December 30, 2010, after letters of protest were filed by

Open Source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

advocates. However, other sources indicate that the filing was only delayed to raise more funds.CPTN Holdings is still trying to buy Novell's patents
/ref> The U.S. Department of Justice announced that in order to proceed with the first phase of their acquisition of certain patents and patent applications from

Inc., CPTN Holdings LLC and its owners altered their original agreements to address the department's antitrust concerns. The department said that, as originally proposed, the deal would jeopardize the ability of open source software, such as Linux, to continue to innovate and compete in the development and distribution of server, desktop, and mobile operating systems, middleware, and virtualization products. With regard to licensing the patents: * All the Novell patents will be acquired subject to the GNU General Public License,

Version 2 Version may refer to: Computing * Software version, a set of numbers that identify a unique evolution of a computer program * VERSION (CONFIG.SYS directive), a configuration directive in FreeDOS Music * Cover version * Dub version * Remix * '' ...

, a widely adopted open-source license, and the

Open Invention Network Open Invention Network (OIN) is an intellectual property rights company based in Durham, United States. It operates as an entity specialising in the acquisition of patents, subsequently granting royalty-free licenses to its community members. T ...

(OIN) License, a significant license for the Linux System; * CPTN does not have the right to limit which of the patents, if any, are available under the OIN license; and * Neither CPTN nor its owners will make any statement or take any action with the purpose of influencing or encouraging either Novell or Attachmate to modify which of the patents are available under the OIN license.

References

Microsoft subsidiaries Novell {{US-corp-stub