Attachmate is one of Seattle’s oldest software companies, with a history stretching back to the early 1980s. But did you know that it operates under the name of Wizard Parent LLC? We didn’t, and now that entity has appeared in a recent SEC filing as having raised $377 million.

Why? A spokeswoman for the company confirmed that Wizard Parent owns The Attachmate Group, but she declined to offer details about the financing.

It appears that the money is tied to Attachmate’s acquisition of Novell, a deal which was first announced last November and closed late last month. On April 27th, Attachmate published a short two paragraph press release about its acquisition of Novell.

Few details were included on the $2.2 billion buyout. But as part of the deal, Attachmate agreed to sell off Novell’s Unix patents to a group called CPTN Holdings that included Apple, Oracle, EMC and Microsoft.

We’re still not sure how the $377 million comes into play, whether it’s part of the overall offer or not. Backed by private equity firms, Attachmate is a relatively quiet company.

Groklaw dug into some of the complexities of the Attachmate-Novell merger last fall, pointing out some of the connections between entities such as Wizard, Attachmate, CPTN and a limited partnership from the Cayman Islands known as Elliott International.

Sounds confusing. Something only a wizard could figure out.

Previously on GeekWireAttachmate: Proud owner of a 20-year-old Microsoft antitrust dispute?

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