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Nortel Patents Sold to Consortium which Includes Apple

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macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
63,489
30,727



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Nortel announced that they had concluded an auction to sell of its patents and patent applications to a consortium consisting of Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, RIM and Sony. The final winning bid was $4.5 billion and includes over 6,000 patents and patent applications covering wireless, 4G, networking optical, voice internet, semiconductors and more.
"Following a very robust auction, we are pleased at the outcome of the auction of this extensive patent portfolio", said George Riedel, Chief Strategy Officer and President of Business Units, Nortel. "The size and dollar value for this transaction is unprecedented, as was the significant interest in the portfolio among major companies around the world."
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We had previously reported that Apple had been interested in buying up the patents off Nortel Networks which had filed for bankruptcy in 2009. The interest in the portfolio was significant due to the broad reach of the patents, especially in the area of wireless networking and LTE technology. Google was also said to be one of the early interested parties by placing an opening bid of $900 million on the patents.

One research firm has estimated that there are 105 patent families deemed essential to deployment of LTE (4G) technology, with Nokia controlling 57 of those families. Ericsson is said to control 14 families, while Nortel, Qualcomm, and Sony are each reported to control about seven families. The companies that are part of the winning bid will presumably provide access to these patents to those companies.



Article Link: Nortel Patents Sold to Consortium which Includes Apple
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/01/nortel-patents-sold-to-consortium-which-includes-apple/
S

SandynJosh

macrumors 68000
Oct 26, 2006
1,652
3
This all makes me wonder how much of the cost to make a phone is the cost of buying all the licenses to make the phone...

Of course the more you own, the less you need to buy a license for, but still...
 
shartypants

shartypants

macrumors 6502a
Jul 27, 2010
922
60
Refreshing to see so many patents being sold to a consortium, hopefully that will cut down on suing, although I'm sure Google is not happy. Microsoft will probably help out Nokia since they are building their phones.
 
S

SandynJosh

macrumors 68000
Oct 26, 2006
1,652
3
JAT said:
Oh god, Google and Nokia not listed. Can't wait for the next round of annoying patent wars. :rolleyes:
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Google does not make phones, so it's of no matter to them, however, I'm sure they would love to own the patents just for the income possibilities.

Nokia owns enough patents to offset not owning these, but isn't Microsoft the new owner of Nokia?
 
B

batchtaster

macrumors 65816
Mar 3, 2008
1,031
217
Here come the counter-suits against Nokia.

How about everyone just call it even and go back to making better phones?
 
C

commander.data

macrumors 65816
Nov 10, 2006
1,057
183
Nice to see Apple, Microsoft, and RIM working together. With companies like Apple and Microsoft having significant cash reserves it's interesting they decided not to go it alone. Based on the sharing, I guess this means they really are planning on using these patents for defense rather than offense.
 
alphaod

alphaod

macrumors Core
Feb 9, 2008
22,183
1,245
NYC
I don't understand why people are concerned about Nokia; according to the official release it clearly says Nokia owns 57 of the 105 requisite patent families for LTE which means they already have more than half of the patents. Furthermore with the Microsoft-Nokia going on, I'm pretty sure they'll be covered no matter what.

Google on the other hand seems to have lost a battle here, but I imagine they will have an agreement going on in the background if they haven't already.
 
C

commander.data

macrumors 65816
Nov 10, 2006
1,057
183
alphaod said:
Google on the other hand seems to have lost a battle here, but I imagine they will have an agreement going on in the background if they haven't already.
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Did Google actually want, as in had to have, these patents? Their bid was the stalking horse bid, just to assign an initial value to the patents and get the auction started. By agreeing to be the stalking horse, Google obviously wouldn't mind having them. But if they had to have them, wouldn't they have held their cards closer to their chest until the actual auction and let someone else be the stalking horse?
 
M

min_t

macrumors regular
May 13, 2004
163
1
City by the City by the Bay
shartypants said:
Refreshing to see so many patents being sold to a consortium, hopefully that will cut down on suing, although I'm sure Google is not happy. Microsoft will probably help out Nokia since they are building their phones.
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MSFT and NOK probably have a shared patent clause. GOOG, on the other hand was not part of the consortium because they made enemies of 3 members on the list.
 
D

DisMyMac

macrumors 65816
Sep 30, 2009
1,087
11
Were the aliens paid from whom we reverse-engineered much of today's technology? I'd love to see them enforce their patent laws on the earth.
 
R

rotarydialz

macrumors member
Dec 11, 2008
32
0
So sad that companies are forced to prevent patent trolls by buying up patents. I doubt a group of friends could invent a successful tech product in their garage in today's cruel legal world.
 
J

JosephKr

macrumors newbie
Jun 6, 2005
17
0
Regarding the Nortel patents

The interesting thing here is that RIM is part of the consortium. RIM can use all the help it can get right now. I also wonder how much each company footed. I suspect that Apple and Microsoft were the biggest contributors. It should be interesting to see how this affects the stock prices when the markets open in a few hours.
 
M

macrumorsuser10

macrumors 6502
Nov 18, 2010
359
445
The companies that should be worried are the Android handset OEMs: Motorola, LG, HTC, etc. Google has a history of not covering the asses of its hardware partners.
 
Rodimus Prime

Rodimus Prime

macrumors G4
Oct 9, 2006
10,136
4
Qramohn said:
So Googles doesn't make phones except for the Nexus models? :cool:
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Google does not even make that. They have someone else make it.

Nexus One was HTC.
Nexus S was Samsung.

The next Nexus the rumor mil is either Motorola or LG.
 
ChazUK

ChazUK

macrumors 603
Feb 3, 2008
5,393
25
Essex (UK)
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2; en-gb; ZTE-BLADE Build/FRF91) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1)

Qramohn said:
So Googles doesn't make phones except for the Nexus models? :cool:
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Like Rodimus said, they have all been made by third parties.

It seems that Google isn't interested in the hardware game.
 
O

orfeas0

macrumors 6502a
Aug 21, 2010
971
1
Athens, Greece
I don't understand how does that company declare bankruptcy? Don't companies use their patents -> give them some steady income? Although "bankruptcy" is subjective, they just made 4,5billions, I don't think they're bankrupt any more :)
 
C

CFreymarc

Suspended
Sep 4, 2009
3,969
1,149
Let the patent suite gang bang being! I am sure that John J. Roese is laughing to the bank seeing his girl married off and violated.
 
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