CPTN, a consortium set up by Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and EMC to acquire hundreds of Novell patents, appears to have inadvertently faked out the open source community by withdrawing its proposal from the German Federal Cartel Office. News reports on Tuesday noted the event and alluded to possible success of the lobbying efforts by such organizations as the American Open Source Initiative and Free Software Foundation Europe to reject the proposal. However Microsoft, a key member of CPTN, subsequently said the withdrawal of the proposal was strictly a procedural move.
