It has been revealed that Novell picked up 39 important business-to-business electronic commerce and Web services patents from bankrupt Commerce One recently, and the company has declared its intention to use them to protect its open-source offerings.
The sale of Commerce One Inc.'s 39 Web services patents went to a mysterious high bidder, JGR Acquisition Inc., for $15.5 million, in a December auction at the Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco.
The patents, which amounted to seven actual patents and 32 patent applications, include technology that broadly describes the framework for B2B using XML, the language family behind Web services.
