“A group including Apple and Research In Motion has paid $4.5 billion to snatch Nortel Networks’ patents from under the noses of Google and Intel , stealing a march on their rivals in a litigious market,” Renju Jose and Georgina Prodhan report for Reuters.
MacDailyNews Take: Boom!
“Nortel had put up for sale 6,000 patents and patent applications in the largest public sale of its kind, a potential treasure trove for latecomers to the market such as Apple, Google and Intel,” Jose and Prodhan report. “The price was about three times what the sale had been expected to raise, underlining the defensive value of intellectual property in the fast-changing telecoms world, where established players are seeking to keep out newer rivals.”
Jose and Prodhan report, “The winning parties — the others are Microsoft, EMC, Ericsson and Sony — are expected to share the patents to maximise their scope to pursue patent litigation, though they did not disclose details… Google, the newest major entrant to the mobile market, with its three-year-old Android software platform, has a weak patent portfolio compared with telecoms rivals and will now be more vulnerable to lawsuits from the auction winners.”
MacDailyNews Take: Patent infringement is a crime. Crime is evil.
Jose and Prodhan report, “The search engine market leader had opened the bidding in April with a $900 million stalking-horse bid, and had been expected to be a winner.”
MacDailyNews Take: Wah-wah-wah-waaahhh.
Jose and Prodhan report, “BlackBerry maker Research in Motion will pay $770 million of the purchase consideration, and Ericsson will pay $340 million. The other parties did not immediately say what their share would be… Richard Windsor, global technology specialist at Nomura Securities [said] ‘And then the consortium will go out and seek to make a return by prosecuting the other people, particularly the Android camp.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: No way Jobs was letting Google rip off Apple again.
Related articles:
Intel gets antitrust approval to bid on Nortel patents – June 24, 2011
Apple gets U.S. antitrust approval to bid for Nortel patent trove – June 23, 2011
Apple, Intel among bidders for Nortel patent trove – June 17, 2011
Nortel delays patent auction one week citing significant interest – June 16, 2011
RIM looks to outbid Apple, Google, and Nokia for Nortel’s patent treasure trove – April 18, 2011
Google bids $900 million for 6,000 Nortel telecom patents in quest to boost patent portfolio – April 4, 2011
Apple reportedly bidding for Nortel patent portfolio – December 13, 2010
This is gonna be tough.
So glad that googloid didn’t get it!
Go Apple!
Me too, glad the grubby hands come out empty-handed.
Regretfully, Google didn’t really lose anything. Rather, they decided that it will be cheaper to develop work-arounds, negotiate cross licensing deals and/or pay licensing fees.
I think you meant “copy” where you put “develop”.
@warbux:
(1) can’t easily develop a workaround for the LTE patents,
(2) tough to negotiate cross-licensing deals when your patent portfolio is lame, and
(3) tough to pay licensing deals when your operating system is given away for free.
Methinks you trivialize Google’s dilemma too much.
Thompson
Apple’s decision to join a consortium of mobile has-beens like Microsoft, RIM and Sony was genius and to get them to foot part of the blll shows why Apple is at the top of its game. Apple knows these aforementioned clowns will be dead in the mobile space within 5 years so there would never be a need to ever sue one of them do why not let them be in the consortium? Masterful.
agreed. It also lessens the possibility of a blocked purchase by the fed on grounds of unfair/ monopolistic practice. Brilliant move indeed.
And, on top of that, EMC and Ericsson can go back to making switching equipment for the network!
Too bad Apple decided to steal Kodak’s patents.
Apple didn’t steel Kodak’s patents.
It appears as though — from past and recent rulings — that the courts are in the process of declaring those particular Kodak patents as being invalid in and of themselves. That’s not Apple’s doing really. It was Kodak filing for stupid patents they should not have and the USPTO issuing patents they never should have.
Steal are you nuts? Kodak patented the concept of taking an image from a motion preview. Key parts of this so-called innovation involves a “capture button”, aka a shutter. A sensor chip. Memory. A display. Etc. Yep, that’s some serious innovation. The first ALJ, Admin Law Judge, said that this innovation was invalid due to OBVIOUSNESS.
You can’t steal a patent… You can infringe it, though it’s looking like Apple didn’t do that either.
I assume the joker is well named
$4.5 BILLION. Wow! 6000 patents. That’s an average of $750,000 per patent! They better be some really GOOD ideas.
Since each party in the “consortium” is contributing a different amount, I wonder how they each is able to draw value from collective “trove” of patents.
They don’t have to be GOOD ideas, just legally defendable 🙂
I can’t wait to taste the fruit that this yields. 🙂
Is that why the ITC and other parties keep on throwing Kodak’s claims out?
RIM & Apple sharing a patent pool. How long will it be I wonder before we see an iPhone with a chicklet-style keyboard. 🙂
RIM can keep that one
“A group including Apple and Research In Motion has paid $4.5 billion to snatch Nortel Networks’ patents from under the noses of Google and Intel , stealing a march”
I wish they’d “steal” some patents from me, and give me $4.5B.
The patent has corrupted the world.
c’est la vie!
Hate the game, not the player.
I am all for folks having a differing point of view and being able to put it out there, but you might want to think twice about exposing your uh… lack of grasp on reality
ok… the previous was a reply comment on a post by an apparent troll, Marco. Is MDN in the habit of pulling posts like his or was he guilty of other offenses?
actually seems pretty lame
what happened to innovating?
more focus on innovating and less on buying already-invented things
I bet 90% of those patents can not be defended that well anyways
What’s the weather like on your planet?
Apple, Microsoft, RIM, and Sony team up against Google and Intel.
Wars create strange bedfellows.
A few weeks ago I called the winning bid to be about $5 Billion. I wished for a consortium as well, as that would be the best of the world even if it included Google, as that would effectively nullify the patent’s litigating value between the partners. But this deal leaving Google out is such a sweet blow.
On a different note, I know RIM CEO considered these patents to be national treasure and wanted to defend them. But spending $700 Million seems a bit too high for a company lacking a clear cut mobile vision/future right now.
In this world when properly handled … MONEY
RULES !!!
Looks like patents are the new carbon credits.
Spending billions on a few pieces of paper is gonna be big this century.
Patents, however imperfect, provide an incentive to innovation, and that is what makes them more than paper. Carbon credits, in contrast, *are* just pieces of paper. They are a made up resource, like the old royal/church indulgences. That some get them for free is an open invitation to corruption, fraud and cronyism. Carbon credits make Madoff-like ponzi schemes look legit by comparison.
Some of these patents are foundational to the Internet and telephony- including mobile. It’s great insurance against lawsuits and means these companies no longer have to license them.
Best of all- it b slaps the Fandroid Theftware Cabal.
I always wondered what FTC stands for!
Have Apple just bought a new stick to beat Samsung with?
What happens to the patents if google buys a company like RIM?