Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and EMC. What do 3 of these companies have in common? They’re all suing Google. And who are EMC? They are a private cloud company, a Google competitor.
Why does that matter? Because these 4 companies have formed a consortium called CPTN Holdings LLC, a company incorporated in Delaware which just purchased 882 patents for $442 million in cash from the company formerly known as Novell which was recently purchased by a Seattle based company called Attachmate. At the moment nothing is publicly known about the nature of those 882 patents. One must surmise that they’re relevant to the CPTN stakeholders key business objectives. It’s not necessary that all 882 patents be relevant to each company and perhaps that’s why they pooled resources as at least 3 of these companies could have paid $442 million in cash by themselves.
It’s probably relevant that Google also bid on these patents. Again, Google itself could have paid $442 million in cash on their own if they felt these patents were critical.
