apple, msft, rim and sony win nortel patent bid

Imp

Lifer
Feb 8, 2000
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Oh, that's what it meant. I thought they each, individually bought chunks of it.
 

theeedude

Lifer
Feb 5, 2006
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$750K/Patent. I'd say they overpaid.
If you took half of that and hired a good engineer full time to come up with stuff to patent, and use the other half to pay patent lawyers, you could get dozens of patents out of $750K.
 

zerocool84

Lifer
Nov 11, 2004
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$750K/Patent. I'd say they overpaid.
If you took half of that and hired a good engineer full time to come up with stuff to patent, and use the other half to pay patent lawyers, you could get dozens of patents out of $750K.

These are high value patents.
 

Deeko

Lifer
Jun 16, 2000
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$750K/Patent. I'd say they overpaid.
If you took half of that and hired a good engineer full time to come up with stuff to patent, and use the other half to pay patent lawyers, you could get dozens of patents out of $750K.

But the point is, you couldn't get THOSE patents in question.
 

theeedude

Lifer
Feb 5, 2006
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But the point is, you couldn't get THOSE patents in question.

Obviously not. I think for Google it's important to get more patents in their portfolio to use as leverage, but they don't necessarily have to be LTE patents. Google is not going to go into the broadband hardware business. I think for them, they can actually get more patents out of $4.5B by doing it themselves.
 

ponyo

Lifer
Feb 14, 2002
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Im glad group of companies won the patents instead of a single company like Google. This way they can't sue each other and the patents sort of become community property.

And lol at Google inventing something themselves. They buy companies rather than invent.
 

Pliablemoose

Lifer
Oct 11, 1999
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Some of those patents are for LTE stuff, and will be crucial in the very near future.

That leaves HTC, MOTO, LG, Google, etc., on the outside looking in.
 

Pliablemoose

Lifer
Oct 11, 1999
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:thumbsdown:
Some of those patents are for LTE stuff, and will be crucial in the very near future.

That leaves HTC, MOTO, LG, Google, etc., on the outside looking in.

Btw, Google has been pretty generous and hasn't been very agressive in patent litigation over their stuff
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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Yay more retarded patent suits from Apple and Microsoft!!! I can't wait.

If I recall correctly, many of these patents mostly pertain to LTE and other wireless network technologies. RIM, Apple, and Sony probably wanted to get in on the action to avoid having to pay licensing fees since they all manufacture hardware. I'm not entirely too certain why Microsoft wanted to get involved, unless they too are planning on using those technologies in some of their future products.

Since it's a consortium, I imagine that it would be fairly difficult for any one member to use the patents to file a lawsuit against someone. It's more likely that they'll be used defensively by the various members. It's also unlikely that other companies will be sued for violation of these patents as they'll most likely be licensing them as the Nortel patents only comprise part of the total LTE patent pool.
 

theeedude

Lifer
Feb 5, 2006
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Some of those patents are for LTE stuff, and will be crucial in the very near future.

That leaves HTC, MOTO, LG, Google, etc., on the outside looking in.

Not LG. They co-developed LTE with Nortel and are now in bed with Ericsson, one of the licensees.
 

theeedude

Lifer
Feb 5, 2006
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If I recall correctly, many of these patents mostly pertain to LTE and other wireless network technologies. RIM, Apple, and Sony probably wanted to get in on the action to avoid having to pay licensing fees since they all manufacture hardware. I'm not entirely too certain why Microsoft wanted to get involved, unless they too are planning on using those technologies in some of their future products.

Since it's a consortium, I imagine that it would be fairly difficult for any one member to use the patents to file a lawsuit against someone. It's more likely that they'll be used defensively by the various members. It's also unlikely that other companies will be sued for violation of these patents as they'll most likely be licensing them as the Nortel patents only comprise part of the total LTE patent pool.

Microsoft already had a license to use these patents. They wanted to get involved to use it as leverage against Android manufacturers.
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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:thumbsdown:

Btw, Google has been pretty generous and hasn't been very agressive in patent litigation over their stuff

First of all, Google doesn't hold a large number of patents. Second, the ones that they do hold are probably the type that don't stand up well in court or that others are likely to infringe upon in the first place.

Also, there are almost no other companies competing against Google in their core business areas. Google bought DoubleClick a while ago and secured the vast majority of internet advertising. They also bought up AdMob to cover advertising on mobile platforms. They really don't have a lot of other companies that fall into their key market so they don't have anyone to sue.

Google has very little to be aggressive over and if they were to actually sue any other large company, it's likely that they'd get hit back just as hard and possibly end up losing. They're far better off playing defensively to avoid adding extra work for their legal team.
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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Microsoft already had a license to use these patents. They wanted to get involved to use it as leverage against Android manufacturers.

Unless they control all of the licenses (which they don't) they can't really use it in any significant manner. At best they could offer to reimburse the manufacturers some small amount if they use WP7. However, without owning a significant portion of the portfolio, it might not amount to much money.

Knowing Microsoft the decision has no strategic value for them, but everyone else in the industry was doing it so Balmer probably thought it must be a good idea.
 

preslove

Lifer
Sep 10, 2003
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Out of a ~$500 phone, I wonder how much these patents will take up in licenses, per unit.
 

Pliablemoose

Lifer
Oct 11, 1999
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Out of a ~$500 phone, I wonder how much these patents will take up in licenses, per unit.

I think the real value will be in trying to burn Android to the ground with these patents...

I've read several comments from patent analysts that suggests this was a major loss for Google and is a bad sign for Android as we know it.
 

Bateluer

Lifer
Jun 23, 2001
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I think the real value will be in trying to burn Android to the ground with these patents...

I've read several comments from patent analysts that suggests this was a major loss for Google and is a bad sign for Android as we know it.

Agreed. Its not a good sign.

I hate the 'If you can't compete, litigate' modus operandi that so many companies have these days. Especially when the patents are so generic a 5 year old could have drawn them up.
 

Pliablemoose

Lifer
Oct 11, 1999
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The other thing I've read is that Google not winning the bid, they could have won by the way, they have the cash, is a vote of no confidence in Android by Google.
 

Deeko

Lifer
Jun 16, 2000
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I wonder if Google is throwing their partners under the bus a little here. For the most part they haven't gotten the brunt of the litigation - their partners have, so they'd be buying patents to to protect Moto and co, which apparently they have little interest in doing.
 

Pliablemoose

Lifer
Oct 11, 1999
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I wonder if Google is throwing their partners under the bus a little here. For the most part they haven't gotten the brunt of the litigation - their partners have, so they'd be buying patents to to protect Moto and co, which apparently they have little interest in doing.

I'm impressed RIM got in there, interesting group that got put together for this purchase, there have to be some deals going on for this to have happened....
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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I think the real value will be in trying to burn Android to the ground with these patents...

I've read several comments from patent analysts that suggests this was a major loss for Google and is a bad sign for Android as we know it.

Part of the problem is that this would be hard to do for a number of reasons. First of all, they don't own all of the patents and it would be impossible to completely shut out the other manufacturers without controlling the whole portfolio. Second, these manufacturers are going to need to be able to license these patents even if they don't use Android and Microsoft is going to want them to sell WP7 phones. Third, many of the Android handset manufacturers most likely already have licensing agreements for these patents.

I imagine that the companies who bought these patents did so in order to get a cheaper licensing rate. Either because patent holders get a discount or because every time they pay the fee some part of the money comes right back to them. If LTE is going to be around for several years and you're making several hundreds of millions of devices during that time, being able to lower the patent royalty costs makes a lot of sense.