Patent Office to Take Second Look at Meritless Claims Threatening Mobile Information Access. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has won reexamination from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) of a bogus patent threatening mobile information access. The reexamination order is the third granted by the PTO after challenges from EFF's Patent Busting Project.

Red Hat and Novell stood up to a patent bully and got a favorable jury verdict in the IPI trial which invalidated some software patents that should never have been issued. It's hard to see how that's not a good thing for open source. It's also good that the particular battle has inspired discussion of the need for fundamental reform of the U.S. patent system.

A global survey of open-source enterprise users of Alfresco software has found that deployments of Red Hat Linux have grown twice as fast as those for Novell SUSE Linux since Novell signed its controversial patent and interoperability agreement with Microsoft in November 2006.

Free Software Foundation Europe has written to the German competition authorities in order to share its concerns about the sale of Novell's patents to a consortium called CPTN, made up of Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and EMC.

The Peer-To-Patent Project is a new initiative by New York Law School's Do Tank in cooperation with the U.S. Patent Office to use open source and open knowledge techniques to help stop the deluge of bad software patents in America.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has won reexamination of an illegitimate patent on voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) that could cripple the adoption of new VoIP technologies.

Novell is preparing to launch an app store called SUSE Gallery. It's designed to help partners and customers find SUSE Linux software appliances that fulfill specific business application needs. Plus, SUSE Gallery effort shows signs that Novell and VMware will continue their joint attack on Red Hat. Here's the scoop.

So, this is what we have been leveled to: patent wars. Earlier this week, I learned that the Linux Foundation has a portfolio of patents they own themselves and are quite willing to take Microsoft on in a patent war. And while I support the Linux Foundation fighting the good fight, I believe there are some issues that had better be considered.

Brian Proffitt, former Managing Editor of LinuxToday, looks at the amounts of money Novell extracts from SUSE users for Microsoft and Novell to share