When Novell and Microsoft aren't busy making their products interoperable, they're busy suing each other. A federal appeals court has decided that Novell's antitrust claims against Microsoft may continue. The Linux vendor argues that Microsoft used its market muscle to weaken sales of word processing program WordPerfect and spreadsheet app Quattro Pro.

Why sue two companies with [relatively] nonexistent desktop businesses when Microsoft provides the biggest potential jackpot of all? (After all, this same company sued and settled with Apple earlier this year.) Unless, of course, it is Microsoft funding the whole thing?

With Microsoft poised to unleash its next collaboration and unified communication (UC) suite next week, rival IBM is launching a preemptive strike by promising a tight level of integration between its own UC platform and its new, free Lotus Symphony productivity suite.

Microsoft has extended its covenant to not sue users of Linux-based products from Novell to all GPL v3 users as soon as GPL v3 code is integrated into SUSE Linux Enterprise. This means that the patent protection Microsoft extends to Novell customers now covers every customer who uses any Linux-based software that Novell distributes under GPL v3.

Now that the “first ever” suit for patent infringement has been lodged against two major Linux distributors, many Microsoft watchers are looking for the smoking gun that will somehow connect Microsoft to the case.

There appear to be a few parallels between what SCO did and what Microsoft is blustering about. They are both concerned about their so called ownership of intellectual property. They both threatend the suppliers and end users of Linux with lawsuits and fines. They both made deals with certain companies to exempt those companies from their browbeating.

Apparently the number of patents that GNU/Linux infringes is on the decline as shown by this short piece on lxer

Red Hat is assuring its customers that they can continue to deploy its Linux operating system with confidence and without fear of legal retribution from Microsoft, despite the increasingly vocal threats emanating from the Redmond, Wash., company.