Back in 2011, Apple teamed up with Ericsson, Microsoft, BlackBerry, and Sony to form a consortium to bid on a collection of 6,000 patents and patent applications from Nortel, a communications company that went bankrupt in 2009.
The team of companies, called the "Rockstar consortium" paid a total of $4.5 billion for the patents following a bidding war with Google and said at the time that the consortium would implement plans to "pursue licensing agreements with companies that are harnessing its intellectual property."
The patents, US 6,098,065, 7,236,969, 7,469,245, 7,672,970, 7,895,178, 7,895,183 and 7,933,883, appear to be related to generating search results, serving advertisements based on search results, and creating user profiles.
Rockstar is seeking damages from Google, and claims that Google's patent infringement is willful.This invention relates to an advertisement machine which provides advertisements to a user searching for desired information within a data network. The machine receives, from a user, a search request including a search argument corresponding to the desired information and searches, based upon the received search argument, a first database having data network related information to generate search results.
Article Link: Apple/Microsoft 'Rockstar Consortium' Sues Google, Others Over Nortel Patents