It's official! Dell Technologies, Linux Foundation and IOTA have partnered up. 

This is what you call a REAL SIGNIFICANT partnership. In this case, the partnered company (Linux Foundation) released a detailed description of what the project entails with Iota and its vision for the future on its official website. Another stepping stone towards major adoption. You can see the official statement of Linux Foundation in here.

Regarding the patent, recently Intel mentioned Iota / Tangle in one of it's patents for IOT. Here is the link. 

A great step for crypto adoption! The future is bright!