Well, the group known as Rockstar Consortium, a team that includes the most powerful tech companies Apple, Microsoft, RIM, Ericsson, and Sony, has announced that the U.S. Department of Justice will give the green light on its purchase of the majority of Nortel’s patent portfolio. The five companies splurged about $4.5 billion on a collection of about 4,000 patent assets related to a brand array of networking, communications, and internet technologies.
Now that this deal is coming to a close finally, this no doubt will lead into more litigation I’m sure. Rockstar says it is set to “implement its plans to pursue licensing agreements with companies that are harnessing its intellectual property.” Basically, this is code for: we’ll sue your ass if you’re caught using are patents without permission.
Rockstar CEO John Veschi, formerly Chief IP Officer of Nortel, put his spin on it:
“We are pleased to emerge from this review process, and are looking forward to working with technology related companies to provide them with access to Rockstar’s technology.
The entire industry has benefitted from Nortel’s groundbreaking innovations, and we are eager to work with them to establish licenses enabling the continued use of this technology.”
In the end, this deal was driven through by Apple, as the company was the biggest investor of the group — shelling out somewhere around $2.6 billion of the total $4.5 billion acquisition cost. The other companies were just along for the ride just to stick it to everyone’s favorite nemesis, Google. The Nortel patents will be an important asset to Apple because the bankrupt company has some real IP communication stuff in its portfolio, which is something the Cupertino-based company could use to defend itself against Motorola’s trove of IP related patents.
Source: Rockstar Consortium