In November 2005, Dr. Jeff Jaffe was announced vice president and chief technology officer for Novell. A formal executive of IBM and Lucent Technologies, Dr. Jaffe is now in charge of Novell's technology and product business units.

He was appointed by President Bill Clinton to serve on the Advisory Committee for the Presidential Commission for Critical Infrastructure Protection.

In 1979, Dr. Jaffe received a Ph.D. in computer science from MIT and then joined IBM where he was responsible for security, directory, and networking software business as manager for the SecureWay business unit.

Jaffe firmly believes that great change in the software patent system is needed in order to push software innovation ahead. He promotes taking on a global approach to achieve this goal. Along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Novell, lead by Jaffe, will lobby to develop legislation and policies around patents designed to promote innovation. Jaffe has been outspoken on this topic and said, "….reform is necessary to promote software innovation."