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Nortel Patents Sold to Consortium which Includes Apple

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Apr 12, 2001
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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/
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...
 
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.
 
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?
 
Here come the counter-suits against Nokia.

How about everyone just call it even and go back to making better phones?
 
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.
 
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.
 
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?
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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 :)
 
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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