TNWmicrosoft has been covering the attempt of CPTN Holdings, a Microsoft-led consortium that includes Apple and Oracle, to purchase hundreds of millions of dollars in Novell patents since the story first broke months ago. Information has justcome forththat points to CPTN Holdings receiving Department of Justice (DOJ) approval for the deal. However, there are a number of caveats that have been put in place to protect open source innovation, and in particular, Linux....

Microsoft and Nokia appear poised to unveil the fruits of their combined labors. Today, invitiations began to go out that announced a joint August 17th event that the two firms will host at GamesCon, in Cologne, Germany. The venue feels nontraditional for what sort of announcement we are expecting. Then again, surely the two companies wanted a venue to reveal (we hope) a few of the first phones that their partnership has created in which they could do so sans interruption....

Nokia is determined not to lose its developer community as it moves to exclusive support of the Windows Phone. Evidence of this came today with news that the company is partnering with Microsoft to host developer instruction summits in both the United States and Europe. There will be six total sessions, and all dates are set except Silicon Valley’s . According to the formal announcement about the series, the goal of the events is to show developers how to build for Windows Phone, and to explain to them why it is worth their while....

Microsoft and Samsung areworking togetherto create the next set of hardware specifications for the second generation of Windows Phone 7 handsets. Samsung will help the Microsoft Windows Phone team create a new set of standards for phones that will, presumably, run the ‘Mango’ update that is widely anticipated to be released this year. Mango contains both multitasking and Internet Explorer 9 Mobile. That Microsoft is working with Samsung to create this spec, and not HTC, or even Nokia shows a strength of relationship between the two companies that should foretell that Samsung is well entrenched in the WP7 ecosystem....

Today Microsoft announced theBlueHat security prize, which will award $260,000 in cash and prizes at the Black Hat USA event in 2012. Microsoft claims that it is putting together the prize to “generate new ideas for defensive approaches to support computer security.” First prize will take home $200,000 in cash, second place $50,000 in cash, and third a MSDN Universal subscription that the company claims is worth $10,000. The timing of the creation of the prize is no accident, with global computer attacks growing more frequent in the public eye, and often more brazen....