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Justice Department Gives Final Approval for Sale of Nortel Patents to Apple, Microsoft

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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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Last year, Apple, Microsoft, EMC, RIM, Sony, and others banded together to win a $4.5 billion bid for more than 6,000 patents from bankrupt network equipment maker Nortel. The group, called "Rockstar Consortium" says it has received final approval from the US Department of Justice for the acquisition of the patents.

nortel_logo1.jpg



Among others, antitrust regulators from the Federal Trade Commission, Canadian authorities, and Nortel's bankruptcy court have previously signed off on the purchase. Just after the purchase last year, it was rumored that Apple had contributed more than half of the total purchase -- $2.6 billion -- and received outright ownership of a number of the key patents in Nortel's portfolio, with the other companies in the consortium receiving licensed rights to the patents.

Now that the legal hurdles are out of the way, Rockstar says it will "implement its plans to pursue licensing agreements with companies that are harnessing its intellectual property." In other words, expect more patent-related lawsuits.

Article Link: Justice Department Gives Final Approval for Sale of Nortel Patents to Apple, Microsoft
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2012/03/12/justice-department-gives-final-approval-for-sale-of-nortel-patents-to-apple-microsoft/
Rodimus Prime

Rodimus Prime

macrumors G4
Oct 9, 2006
10,136
4
Bear said:
Rockstar versus Google-Motorola?
Click to expand...

but Motorola also has quite a few of the key patents in LTE tech as well.

The Nortel patents are going to be mostly FRAND patents. That is great for money but more worthless if you want to hurt your competitors. I expect some patent trading deals to go on.
 
Peace

Peace

Cancelled
Apr 1, 2005
19,546
4,556
Space The Only Frontier
Rodimus Prime said:
but Motorola also has quite a few of the key patents in LTE tech as well.

The Nortel patents are going to be mostly FRAND patents. That is great for money but more worthless if you want to hurt your competitors. I expect some patent trading deals to go on.
Click to expand...

A vast majority of Motorola's patents are FRAND also. Even though they arn't acting like it.
 
Mad-B-One

Mad-B-One

macrumors 6502a
Jun 24, 2011
789
5
San Antonio, Texas
LaWally said:
Lawsuits to follow ...
Click to expand...

...or finally the package enabling Apple to just cross-license the patents GoogMoto & Samsung see infringed upon in iDevices. Pretty sure (have no evidence - so don't ask for it) that without this chunk, GoogMoto or Samsung cannot use 3G and whatever you want to call the "4G-cocktail" of standards.

PS: Rockstar... Really? Someone played too much Grand Theft Auto? :)
 
Exotic-Car Man

Exotic-Car Man

macrumors regular
Oct 29, 2010
138
0
USA
More lawsuits = Law Blog

MacRumors said:
In other words, expect more patent-related lawsuits.
Click to expand...

Could we please have a separate blog called "Law" for all of these future lawsuits to go into?

When I first started reading MacRumors about a year and a half ago, (this was even before the latest website layout/remodel) it was a great place to go for Apple news and rumors of new products, and it provided a guidance for when to buy your Apple product. The site still strongly holds those values now, but since Apple has begun being sued left and right about a year ago (give or take a couple months), MacRumors has lost some of the pleasurable reading environment and experience that it used to have. Now, I feel like lawsuit articles are awkwardly spread throughout the Front Page, iOS Blog, and Mac Blog. If these lawsuit articles were in a separate blog, people like me, who are uninterested in these articles, could completely ignore them, but people who enjoy these articles could still read them. I'm sure there's people like me who get perturbed by all of these articles, but there are most likely others who still want to read them.

Thanks.
 
Last edited:
BC2009

BC2009

macrumors 68020
Jul 1, 2009
2,237
1,393
Rodimus Prime said:
but Motorola also has quite a few of the key patents in LTE tech as well.

The Nortel patents are going to be mostly FRAND patents. That is great for money but more worthless if you want to hurt your competitors. I expect some patent trading deals to go on.
Click to expand...

Actually, the value of the Nortel portfolio was so high because it was largely unencumbered. In their waining years, Nortel did not renew licenses for patents in their portfolio in order to increase the value of the portfolio. If they had previously offered the patents up for FRAND licensing then the worth of the portfolio probably would not have been $4.5B. Heck, $4.5B for roughly 2,000 patents is a whole lot more than most folks are getting for patent sales.

If they are largely FRAND patents then Rockstar overpaid, but then Apple will likely use the portfolio to take the teeth out of Motorola's FRAND lawsuits (assuming the "Qualcomm already paid for that" defense fails).
 
Rodimus Prime

Rodimus Prime

macrumors G4
Oct 9, 2006
10,136
4
BC2009 said:
Actually, the value of the Nortel portfolio was so high because it was largely unencumbered. In their waining years, Nortel did not renew licenses for patents in their portfolio in order to increase the value of the portfolio. If they had previously offered the patents up for FRAND licensing then the worth of the portfolio probably would not have been $4.5B. Heck, $4.5B for roughly 2,000 patents is a whole lot more than most folks are getting for patent sales.

If they are largely FRAND patents then Rockstar overpaid, but then Apple will likely use the portfolio to take the teeth out of Motorola's FRAND lawsuits (assuming the "Qualcomm already paid for that" defense fails).
Click to expand...

It been viewed that anything that gets put into the LTE standard are going to be FRAND no if ands or buts about it. They know it.

If you look at a lot of the 3G patents and for example the one with the current Moto suing Apple. Most of the time companies just cross licences patents over paying FRAND rates. I expect a lot of that to happen here as well.

I think a lot of experts think that Nortal got a great deal. Google back out and did not join with RockStar because that lost the weapon they wanted which was to have others back off on the lawsuits my guess with cross licencing.

The RockStar group did not want Google to get it because that would give Google a huge amount of teeth but as a weapon against Android the patents are rather weak.
 
mdriftmeyer

mdriftmeyer

macrumors 68040
Feb 2, 2004
3,809
1,985
Pacific Northwest
Rodimus Prime said:
It been viewed that anything that gets put into the LTE standard are going to be FRAND no if ands or buts about it. They know it.

If you look at a lot of the 3G patents and for example the one with the current Moto suing Apple. Most of the time companies just cross licences patents over paying FRAND rates. I expect a lot of that to happen here as well.

I think a lot of experts think that Nortal got a great deal. Google back out and did not join with RockStar because that lost the weapon they wanted which was to have others back off on the lawsuits my guess with cross licencing.

The RockStar group did not want Google to get it because that would give Google a huge amount of teeth but as a weapon against Android the patents are rather weak.
Click to expand...

BC2009 has it correct.
 
BC2009

BC2009

macrumors 68020
Jul 1, 2009
2,237
1,393
Rodimus Prime said:
It been viewed that anything that gets put into the LTE standard are going to be FRAND no if ands or buts about it. They know it.

If you look at a lot of the 3G patents and for example the one with the current Moto suing Apple. Most of the time companies just cross licences patents over paying FRAND rates. I expect a lot of that to happen here as well.

I think a lot of experts think that Nortal got a great deal. Google back out and did not join with RockStar because that lost the weapon they wanted which was to have others back off on the lawsuits my guess with cross licencing.

The RockStar group did not want Google to get it because that would give Google a huge amount of teeth but as a weapon against Android the patents are rather weak.
Click to expand...

If Apple is one of the members of the standards organization that pushed the LTE standard then certainly they would not be able to assert any LTE-related patents on any terms other than RAND/FRAND, but I don't know if Nortel ever participated in pushing the LTE standard. Typically, offering a patent or a portfolio for RAND/FRAND licensing is done to help finalize a standard and increase your potential base of licensees. It's a voluntary action that usually coincides with joining a standards body (much like MPEG-LA with H.264).

I think that these patents allow Apple to force Moto to cross-licensing anything they have while leaving Apple's other patents in play. I'm sure Nortel had a few gems in there too which we will see come to light at some future date.
 
M

moore2772

macrumors newbie
Mar 11, 2011
25
0
What about Nortel stockholders?

I bought a little Nortel stock a few months before it tanked. It's worth less than a dollar for all my shares now. Who is getting all this $$$$$ that is being paid for these patents? The stockholders should certainly share in that!
$4.5 billion???
 
D

daxomni

macrumors 6502
Jun 24, 2009
457
6
Exotic-Car Man said:
Could we please have a separate blog called "Law" for all of these future lawsuits to go into?
Click to expand...
There are all sorts of threads I'm not interested in. Which is why I read the tread title before clicking on it.

moore2772 said:
I bought a little Nortel stock a few months before it tanked. It's worth less than a dollar for all my shares now. Who is getting all this $$$$$ that is being paid for these patents? The stockholders should certainly share in that!
$4.5 billion???
Click to expand...
You say this with a straight face? In a country where we routinely privatize profits and socialize losses? You must be joking?
 
itickings

itickings

macrumors 6502a
Apr 14, 2007
947
185
moore2772 said:
I bought a little Nortel stock a few months before it tanked. It's worth less than a dollar for all my shares now. Who is getting all this $$$$$ that is being paid for these patents? The stockholders should certainly share in that!
$4.5 billion???
Click to expand...

Thanks for the laugh, I needed that. :D

On the off chance you were serious: the shareholders will get what's left after all debts have been paid.
 
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