Apple, Oracle, Microsoft Acquire Novell Patents Together

Well well well well well, paint me red and call me a girly scout. I’ve been saying for months now that there’s much more collaboration between Apple and Microsoft than their respective fanboys want to believe, especially when it comes to fighting Google and Android, which both companies partly do via patent suits. More evidence for this has emerged today. Remember CPTN Holdings, the consortium led by Microsoft which bought that bundle of patents from Novell? Which other companies are part of this consortium? EMC. Oracle. Apple.

There’s no smoking gun, but in my view, the evidence has been mounting that Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle are undertaking a coordinated attack on Google, and specifically on Android. With mobile being the big growth business for the coming years, it’s clear all of these companies want in – especially Apple and Microsoft.

Apple and Microsoft are both going after HTC – HTC signed a patent agreement with Microsoft to ward them off because the Taiwanese phone maker was already busy fighting Apple at the time. In its suit against HTC, Apple targeted Android specifically, very carefully working around the Windows Mobile devices HTC was making – even though the patents in suit could apply to Windows Mobile just as much.

And at more or less the same time, Oracle sues Google. With Oracle’s Larry Ellison being good friends with Steve Jobs, it doesn’t appear to be a coincidence.

And now, we have the news that CPTN Holdings, which recently acquired a boatload of patents from Novell, is actually a consortium consisting of EMC, Oracle, Apple, and Microsoft. All this is yet more proof that when it comes to intellectual property – the chosen weapon in the fight against Android – Oracle, Apple, and Microsoft are big buddies.

It’ll be interesting to see if Google will be able to withstand all this.

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