The big news at the moment are not exactly news. Red Hat is taking interoperability with Microsoft, but patents are definitely not part of this spiel. To quote:

Patent agreements, however, won't be on the table, as far as Red Hat is concerned.

Red Hat wants interoperability. It said so a long time ago. It will not involve any acknowledgment of patent infringements and it probably won't (mustn't) touch on anything that helps Microsoft's fight against OpenDocument format. We shall see.

Afterthought/update: Remember that Red Hat understands how Free software works. Unlike Linspire and Xandros, which lost access to GPLv3-licensed code, Red Har understands what it happening. The FSF has just prevented Linux companies from making patent deals. It does not pay off. Novell benefits from an exemption because its deal predates March 28th (owing to the grandfather clause, I think, but IANAL). It was a one-of-a-kind deal (and probably also the last one of this type). Something tells me that the media will blow things out of proportion tomorrow.