If RIM, as a part of this consortium received a paid-up license to use all of the Nortel patents in exchange for their 770 million dollars, what would happen if RIM were acquired by another company? Would the acquiring company also inherit the paid up license to use all of those patents?
With the recent drop in RIM's stock price, Google could purchase RIM for about 15 billion dollars. If that price includes the license rights for 4.5 billion dollars worth of patents as well as all of RIM's existing patents, customer base and infrastructure, then Google may have dropped out of the bidding war for the patents because they see more value in acquiring RIM outright to gain access to the patents than by purchasing the patents outright.
A lot of Apple's success with the iPhone comes from controlling both the hardware and the software. If Google wants to imitate that model, acquiring RIM at its current valuation may make a lot of sense.