

Apple and others given green light to bid on Nortel Patents - ChuckMcM
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/06/going-going-gone-tech-giants-approved-to-bid-on-nortel-patents.ars

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ChuckMcM
This article discusses a recent decision to allow Apple to also bid on the
Nortel patents. For those of you who aren't following this skirmish in Patent-
a-geddon, what is at stake here are some key patents for implementing 4G
radios and phones.

Google has an opening bid of $900M on the table. This will go up. I expect
Google to pay between 6 and 8 billion dollars for the patents.

The strategy here is pretty clear, if you have patents which you can use
against Apple in the phone business, then it mitigates, or even completely
neuters Apple's ability to come after you with their own patents. Basically
the table will be 'license us everything you patented about smartphones or we
won't license you the ability to play in the 4G market'.

Apple on the other hand if they get these patents has an even stronger hand
and can keep non-Apple smartphones price incompetitive for years and years.

The number 6B comes from it being 10% of Apple's 60B in short term cash and
cash equivalents [1]. If they were to pay more than that in cash they would
have to put it up for a shareholder vote and it might get out of hand, Google
on the other hand pretty much has to own these patents. So Apple bids 6 and
Google bids > 6 to force the issue.

Amazing that in 'life' Nortel was never worth so much :-)

[1] [http://www.macrumors.com/2011/01/18/apple-reports-
record-1q-...](http://www.macrumors.com/2011/01/18/apple-reports-
record-1q-2011-6-billion-profit-on-26-74-billion-in-revenue/)

