Huh?

It's nce that Google and co have bought up some Free/Open Source patents and promised not to use them; sort of like protecting a plot of land by splitting up ownership into 1-metre, blocks, I guess.

But --- even leaving aside the question of whether software should be patentable at all -- how can there BE "open source patents"? If software was 'protected' by the GPL/whatever, how can it also be patented by someone else?

Maybe this is a Reg typo: is it that Google et al have bought up patents that might *conceivably* been used, perniciously, against Linux? Which would make more sense...