Jesus. Do you even read your own source before posting? The author seems just as confused as you are, since he's the one posting the Novell comments, and saying

Jesus. Do you even read your own source before posting? The author seems just as confused as you are, since he's the one posting the Novell comments, and saying it's actually about Nortel, when it's not. From your own source, here's what Microsoft said: > Google says we bought -- Novell -- patents to keep them from Google. Really? We asked them to bid jointly with us. They said no. Also here's why Google didn't buy them: http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/04/google-we-didnt-co-bid-on-novell-patents-because-it-was-a-trap/ http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/04/google-we-didnt-co-bid-on-... > “A joint acquisition of the Novell patents that gave all parties a license would have eliminated any protection these patents could offer to Android against attacks from Microsoft and its bidding partners. Making sure that we would be unable to assert these patents to defend Android — and having us pay for the privilege — must have seemed like an ingenious strategy to them. We didn’t fall for it.” Joining Microsoft to buy those patents would've made those patents useless for Google in the fight against Microsoft. Google is trying to buy up patents to defend against Microsoft. They can't do that if they can't assert those patents against Microsoft. If I may try an analogy, say someone is coming at you with a knife, and you have nothing to defend yourself than a toy gun, and that person knows it's a toy gun. How useful is that gun threatening going to be to scare the guy with the knife away. Pretty useless no? Well that's the same thing with the Novell patents.