Apple consortium wins $4.5 billion Nortel patent trove auction; Google, Intel lose bidding battle

Friday, July 1, 2011 · 9:04 am · 33 Comments

“A group including Apple and Research In Motion has paid $4.5 billion to snatch Nortel Networks’ patents from under the noses of Google and Intel , stealing a march on their rivals in a litigious market,” Renju Jose and Georgina Prodhan report for Reuters.

MacDailyNews Take: Boom!

“Nortel had put up for sale 6,000 patents and patent applications in the largest public sale of its kind, a potential treasure trove for latecomers to the market such as Apple, Google and Intel,” Jose and Prodhan report. “The price was about three times what the sale had been expected to raise, underlining the defensive value of intellectual property in the fast-changing telecoms world, where established players are seeking to keep out newer rivals.”

Jose and Prodhan report, “The winning parties — the others are Microsoft, EMC, Ericsson and Sony — are expected to share the patents to maximise their scope to pursue patent litigation, though they did not disclose details… Google, the newest major entrant to the mobile market, with its three-year-old Android software platform, has a weak patent portfolio compared with telecoms rivals and will now be more vulnerable to lawsuits from the auction winners.”

MacDailyNews Take: Patent infringement is a crime. Crime is evil.

Jose and Prodhan report, “The search engine market leader had opened the bidding in April with a $900 million stalking-horse bid, and had been expected to be a winner.”

MacDailyNews Take: Wah-wah-wah-waaahhh.

Jose and Prodhan report, “BlackBerry maker Research in Motion will pay $770 million of the purchase consideration, and Ericsson will pay $340 million. The other parties did not immediately say what their share would be… Richard Windsor, global technology specialist at Nomura Securities [said] ‘And then the consortium will go out and seek to make a return by prosecuting the other people, particularly the Android camp.’”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: No way Jobs was letting Google rip off Apple again.

Related articles:
Intel gets antitrust approval to bid on Nortel patents – June 24, 2011
Apple gets U.S. antitrust approval to bid for Nortel patent trove – June 23, 2011
Apple, Intel among bidders for Nortel patent trove – June 17, 2011
Nortel delays patent auction one week citing significant interest – June 16, 2011
RIM looks to outbid Apple, Google, and Nokia for Nortel’s patent treasure trove – April 18, 2011
Google bids $900 million for 6,000 Nortel telecom patents in quest to boost patent portfolio – April 4, 2011
Apple reportedly bidding for Nortel patent portfolio – December 13, 2010

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