09.02.10
“Novell Laboratories” and Patent Extortion Against Generic Drugs
Summary: Notorious “death patents” are being used against Novell
A COMPANY we never heard of before, called “Novell” (not the same as Novell Inc.), turns out to have finished a patent fight against Salix (not Scalix, which is property of Xandros now). This is fascinating becase there are quite a few companies called “Novell” and this one may be a sign of things to come from Novell Inc.
From the news:
The settlement calls for Salix and Norgrine to grant Novell a license to the patents covering Moviprep no later than Sept. 24, 2018. If approved by the court, the agreement will result in the dismissal of Novell’s claim that MoviPrep’s patents are invalid and a lawsuit by Salix and Norgrine to stop Novell from selling a generic version of the drug.
Watch what they are doing here. Killing generic drugs is often a death knell to many people who can only afford generics (c.f TRIPS [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]). That’s what we call “death patents”.
In separate news, a company called Active Endpoints (for business process management systems) has someone who was bought by Novell inside its management now.
Chris Keller, Founder and Vice President, Product Development, has founded three technology companies. He was previously at Novell, GemLogic (acquired Novell/SilverStream), and LexiBridge (acquired by Level3 Communications).
It sure seems like a lot of Novell executives leave quietly. We wrote about Chris Keller some days ago. Perhaps all that will be left of Novell Inc. is other companies with the same name.█