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 dangers of software patents for free software have always been a hot issue. But with the news that Red Hat and Novell are being sued for alleged patent infringement by IP Innovation, the matter has moved from theory into practice.

In hindsight, it is claimed that Red Hat too has an ambivalent view on the subject of software patents, at least historically; Novell, as expected, is not against software patents

Red Hat and ESP (End Software Patents), a Free Software Foundation project, are joining others in challenging the legal logic used for software patents.

As you likely heard on any number of news sites, Oracle has filed suit against Google, claiming that Android infringes some of its Java-related copyrights and patents. Too little information is available about the copyright infringement claim to say much about it yet; we expect we'll learn more as the case proceeds.

How S.u.S.E. turned from an opposer of software patents into an extension of Novell which legitimises them in Germany (where software patents continue to challenge Europe's status quo)

Novell is still pursuing intellectual monopolies and Apple threatens to use them to attack Linux-based products from Palm

There is no substantial news here other than development of discussions, which seem to spread fairly fast from one blog to another blog and soon onto the press. To repeat criticisms from yesterday about Novell’s announcement on China [1, 2], Novell and Microsoft keep spreading software patents to all parts of the world (never mind the legality), using SUSE Linux (Ballnux).

A protest takes place, the press is humming, and OpenOffice.org may be getting poisoned by Mono