The Electric Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Novell have joined forces to develop changes to software patents.

 The two will lobby government associations to develop policy and legislation around patents. They will focus largely on the World Intellectual Property Organization, which is composed of UN government members who meet to discuss intellectual property matters.

Nat Friedman, chief strategy and technology officer for open source at Novell says that the partnership with the EFF is about creating an environment where software developers and users no longer have to fear the negative consequences of software patents.  Novell's hope is that patents will no longer be an issue for software companies.  Jeff Jaffe, Executive VP and chief technology officer of Novell believes that great change in the software patent system is needed in order to push software innovation ahead because, “It is increasingly obvious that software patents are not a meaningful measure of innovation.”  He believes to achieve this a global approach is necessary. 

The EFF is no stranger to the fight for promoting worldwide intellectual property issues. Their 2004 "Patent Busting" project was launched to protect innovations and to battle against counterfeit software patents, as well as, unlawful patent applications.

With more than 500 patents, Novell recognizes that the current patent system is harmful to open source development, which is their main area of concentration. They have taken several steps in the past few years to support the use of patents to protect open source.