Nortel Patents Sold to Consortium which Includes Apple

[cmaier]

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.

This has absolutely nothing to do with patent trolls. Patent trolls, by definition, do not make, sell, import, or use products that practice the patents they are asserting. Since a troll doesn't make anything, the victim having his own patents is useless- he can't sue the troll in retaliation.

Remember that having these patents doesn't give these companies the right to practice them - it only gives them the right to stop OTHERS from practicing them. So this patent purchase is helpful only for use against non-trolls, like competitors.

So does each company have access to all patents both for products and legal offense/defense?

Probably they all have a cross-license (so none of the companies can sue any of the other companies), but each has their own portion of the patents to use as they see fit (against companies not in the group).

It's still against anti-trust laws to withhold a group of patents vital to an industry.

Says who?

 

[ny3ranger]

Microsoft doesnt make phones either. Also Googles hardware manufacturers arent listed in the patent. So any android phone that violates Nortel patents will probably have license or get sued.

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?

 

[jonnysods]

Imagine wading through all those patents!

 

[Stok3]

with all this patent drama its a wonder tech companies have the time to create products.

 

[Jaro65]

Finally - although they got $4.5Bn for the patents - they might have had $10Bn in liabilities...

Which I think they do. I forgot the exact number, but from what I recall it was a bit over $10B.

Funny how this works. I used to work at Nortel some years ago and during the 90's the company was making money left and right. At the same time it was spending as much as it made. For example, they paid $6B to acquire an optical switch manufacturer. Nortel never sold one of those switches....

Anyway, those patents encompass a lot of hard work by many dedicated people. Leave it up to the management to screw the ordinary working folks.

 

[CommodityFetish]

I had a dream once that there were no patents and companies had to compete on how they implemented and delivered ideas instead of being granted the legal right to hoard ideas in order to prevent (or charge) anyone else from using them. I don't remember any lawsuits in this dream, and everyone seemed to be much happier.

 

[Lennholm]

I had a dream once that there were no patents and companies had to compete on how they implemented and delivered ideas instead of being granted the legal right to hoard ideas in order to prevent (or charge) anyone else from using them. I don't remember any lawsuits in this dream, and everyone seemed to be much happier.

I also had a dream where there were no patents. Technical progress stagnated since it wasn't worth the effort to invest in R&D anymore and all companies soon went bankrupt since the price race to the bottom for the pre-existing technology removed all margins and profits.

 

[cmaier]

I had a dream once that there were no patents and companies had to compete on how they implemented and delivered ideas instead of being granted the legal right to hoard ideas in order to prevent (or charge) anyone else from using them. I don't remember any lawsuits in this dream, and everyone seemed to be much happier.

That would be awesome! I can make money hand over fist finding the cheapest foreign labor to implement good ideas that other companies come up with. Oh, wait - those other companies won't come up with any good ideas because it would make more sense for them to wait for someone else to do so and just copying them, thus saving the R&D.

Hmmm. Well, at least the pharmaceutical companies will spend a billion dollars to research a drug that they can never make their money back on due to immediate cloning by generics manufacturers. I mean, what do I care - I probably am not going to get any diseases.

Hey, we may be stuck with lame technologies and no innovation, and we may all die from curable diseases, but at least there won't be any lawsuits.

 

[Laird Knox]

Only in america. Generic patents are so stupid! If the wheel was a new invention I am sure that would had been patented that to.

Dang those American companies buying up patents! Shame on you Ericsson, Sony and RIM!

 

[ThisIsNotMe]

Only in america. Generic patents are so stupid! If the wheel was a new invention I am sure that would had been patented that to.

Ya. The Constitutional mechanism to protect innovation that has made America the most innovative country this planet has ever seen is pretty stupid.........

 

[cmaier]

Only in america. Generic patents are so stupid! If the wheel was a new invention I am sure that would had been patented that to.

Lots of the patents aren't american.

Nice analysis, though ;-)

 

[jzuena]

Only in america. Generic patents are so stupid! If the wheel was a new invention I am sure that would had been patented that to.

Except that this auction happened in Canada and 1/2 of the winning consortium members (Ericsson, RIM and Sony) aren't American.

Edit: looks like I'm 4th in line on this comment!

 

[Stok3]

Ya. The Constitutional mechanism to protect innovation that has made America the most innovative country this planet has ever seen is pretty stupid.........

actually this patent mess is doing the opposite of the original intentions.

 

[cmaier]

actually this patent mess is doing the opposite of the original intentions.

How so? We've had more patents filed and more lawsuits than ever before, and innovation is happening more than ever.

 

[CommodityFetish]

I guess there wasn't any technical progress in human history before patents were instituted. Good thing they came along! And open-source software of course never makes any technical progress because it doesn't rely on the patent system.

"Linux distributions are also commonly used as operating systems for supercomputers: since November 2010, out of the top 500 systems, 459 (91.8%) run a Linux distribution."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#Servers.2C_mainframes_and_supercomputers

 

[Rodimus Prime]

I wonder if they will consortium will form a new company who job is to handle the patents much like MEPGLA. They each own a respective amount based on the amount they bid.

 

[Lennholm]

I guess there wasn't any technical progress in human history before patents were instituted. Good thing they came along! And open-source software of course never makes any technical progress because it doesn't rely on the patent system.

"Linux distributions are also commonly used as operating systems for supercomputers: since November 2010, out of the top 500 systems, 459 (91.8%) run a Linux distribution."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#Servers.2C_mainframes_and_supercomputers

Technical progress in the past was sloooow. There were never any millions of $ for R&D, there still isn't in the open-source community. Open-source is all about software and software can be developed rather cheaply by as little as one developer. Hardware simply can't be, it has to have the funding.
There is a reason technological progress has exploded since the patent system appeared.

 

[CommodityFetish]

Technical progress in the past was sloooow. There were never any millions of $ for R&D, there still isn't in the open-source community. Open-source is all about software and software can be developed rather cheaply by as little as one developer. Hardware simply can't be, it has to have the funding.
There is a reason technological progress has exploded since the patent system appeared.

Fair enough, still the current system as it operates today seems much less than ideal, and often counter-productive and not to be serving the public good in the way the patent system is supposed to. Others have made the critique better than I can, for example see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_patents

Also, open-source hardware does exist, if much less fully developed than software:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_hardware

 

[cmaier]

Fair enough, still the current system as it operates today seems much less than ideal, and often counter-productive and not to be serving the public good in the way the patent system is supposed to. Others have made the critique better than I can, for example see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_patents

Also, open-source hardware does exist, if much less fully developed than software:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_hardware

Whether something is open-sourced or not has nothing to do with patents. "Open-source" refers to copyright law, not patent law.

 

[ThisIsNotMe]

How so? We've had more patents filed and more lawsuits than ever before, and innovation is happening more than ever.

Its because its "cool" to hate on the "evil" corporations regardless of the (illogical) reasoning.

 

[Jjaro]

Consortium

So, when they are saying "Consortium", does that mean all these businesses came together to buy these patents ad a group? This seems smart, because then no one company will be a "target", know what I'm saying?

EDIT - Oh, looks like my question was already answered. My bad. That's what I get for posting then reading through.

 

[Glideslope]

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.

Could not agree more. Hard to envision, but the times are a changin fast.

 

[JorgeNC]

Nortel is such a disaster, I can't even believe they're still around. They're also cutting off all benefits to retirees and those on medical leave. When will they finally just go away?

 

[liavman]

Some interesting details on the auction proceedings:

http://beta.news.yahoo.com/dealtalk-google-bid-pi-nortel-patents-lost-013854187.html

 

[jsjackso]

Which I think they do. I forgot the exact number, but from what I recall it was a bit over $10B.

Funny how this works. I used to work at Nortel some years ago and during the 90's the company was making money left and right. At the same time it was spending as much as it made. For example, they paid $6B to acquire an optical switch manufacturer. Nortel never sold one of those switches....

Anyway, those patents encompass a lot of hard work by many dedicated people. Leave it up to the management to screw the ordinary working folks.

I think it's quite a bit more than $10B once European debt is factored in.

I worked there up until being laid off in Sept. 2009 and you're very right that they were blowing money like crazy for a while. There were many, many extremely stupid business decisions during the 11 years I was there, and buying other companies was only one type of bad decision. An overly pervasive attitude that analyzing and changing processes via Lean Six Sigma could fix any problem did not help the situation. Neither did offshoring a huge amount of development, testing, and support.