

Who Won The 6,000+ Nortel Patents? Apple, RIM, Microsoft — Everyone But Google - BvS
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/01/apple-microsoft-rim-google-nortel-patents/

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ianterrell
It kind of feels like when you're winning in Risk early on and all the other
players band together just to destroy you. Sure, it's not against the rules,
and it's good strategy, but you still think they're all dicks.

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tatsuke95
Maybe I'm wrong here, but I'm going to assume that Google did its due
diligence, came up with a value to bid on the patents (that includes future
costs of law suits, royalties owed/earned, as well as new technologies derived
from the patents) and made that bid.

In that case, what their opponents pay (or perhaps, overpay) is no longer
Google's concern. That's the mindset you have to take in an auction.

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chalst
Did Google know who they were bidding against?

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tatsuke95
That's part of the risk assessment. They would have to account for the fact
that competitors would also bid on the patents.

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chalst
So you think they didn't know?

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saalweachter
What's the status of the patents in the package?

Looking up random patents from a (2006) list of Nortel patents
([http://www.nortel.com/corporate/technology/patents/collatera...](http://www.nortel.com/corporate/technology/patents/collateral/list_of_nortel_patents_0506.pdf))
yields things like "Patent Expired Due to NonPayment of Maintenance Fees Under
37 CFR 1.362"
([http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/!ut/p/c5/04_SB8K8xLL...](http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/!ut/p/c5/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os3h3cz9XEzcPIwMLvyALA08jF39LE2cjQwMLU6B8JG55dxNKdBuYEtAdDnItftvxyYPMB8kb4ACOBvp-
Hvm5qfqR-lHmCFPcff3dgKa4ebh5BxgZG7gb6UfmpKYnJlfqF-
SGRhhkBmQEOioqAgBVda8T/dl3/d3/L0lJSklna21DU1EhIS9JRGpBQU15QUJFUkNKRXFnLzRGR2dzbzBWdnphOUlBOW9JQSEhLzdfRzdORTRGSDIwR01PRjBJMkZIRktQMjMwRzIvWnM3MV81NjE2MDAxNi9zYS5nZXRCaWI!/))

It's possible that those 6000+ patents contain only a handful which are (a)
strategically useful (b) not defunct and (c) won't expire in the next few
years. After all, when's the last time Microsoft got a good deal on something?

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cube13
4G LTE technology. That's hugely valuable to everyone in the mobile space.

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protomyth
Seems like Microsoft, Apple, and RIM would like to have a couple of bargaining
chips with the folks who own the rest of the cell patents.

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furyg3
This seems an awful lot like collusion (IANAL), and if it isn't illegal, it
sure feels like it should be.

Google should have gotten in on the deal with the rest to pay a bit more and
open-source them all.

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fleitz
How so? Why should companies be forbidden to purchase property as a group? How
is the objective (licensing some patents) illegal?

Also, how exactly does one 'open source' a patent? Patents are not modifiable
after the application is submitted, and as soon as they are granted the
document is viewable by all. As far as I know Google does not license their
patents for free, so why would they buy a bunch of patents just to license
them for free?

Regarding Google and open source, you'd be hard pressed to find a line of open
source code from Google for anything that makes them money.

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furyg3
Yes, but if they are purchasing this property together to use as a weapon
against another company... it seems awfully anti-competitive. Similarly, you
could make a similar assertion that "companies should be allowed to sell their
products at prices they decide", but it's quite another thing if several get
together to do this to put another organisation out of business (or drive-up
prices). It's anti-competitive and (eventually) bad for everyone.

Regarding 'open source', I'm assuming you can buy a patent and put it in the
public domain or some similar construction. This may be attractive for a group
of companies who are all being blackmailed into licensing. It may even be
worth paying a premium for, as it could reduce exposure to risks (licensor
changing his mind, competitor buying license and suing, etc).

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mrich
Wow. If there was any proof needed that patents seldom help the "underdog",
here it is.

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protomyth
Calling Google the underdog is not quite accurate.

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antihero
This is such a pointless and counter-productive war.

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tybris
One of their mistakes was to publicly announce they were placing a major bid
to protect themselves against patent litigation. Their opponents sensed
weakness and trashed the party. This will be yet another business case for
corporate secrecy.

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suking
Or maybe they had no real interest at all and were instead making a big PR
game out of it to get the others to spend more than they would have?

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nextparadigms
Why didn't Google gather around all the Android manufacturers from the
beginning and make a pool with them? Why did they risk losing the patents by
going at it alone?

It only took Apple to try to bid for them, and they could've beaten Google if
they _really_ wanted, simply because they can afford to lose more cash than
Google. Google should've considered this from the beginning. And in reality it
was even worse, it more allied against them to get the patents, so Apple
didn't even have to bother too much for them.

I think it was a newbie mistake to not get all Android manufacturers or the
whole OHA to pay for them.

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protomyth
I get the feeling that the shake-up at the top had something to do with how
uncoordinated they seem in this. It really looks like everyone else decided
they didn't really want to spend huge money on something the DoJ was watching.
Apple and Microsoft already have patent deals together and had, by accounts, a
not so fun experience in video patents. RIM stills has the scars from their
last patent war. Heck, Kodak has caused each of these companies problems. I am
sure it was one of those "let's form a patent pool" things.

Google's behavior with WebM / h.264 probably made them an unsuitable partner,
never mind the market share thing.

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chalst
Does the word _cartel_ mean anything to the DOJ? I guess we'll find out.

Now, why was EMC in the cartel? My first reaction was that this is the higher
margin companies ganging up to defeat the low cost free software strategy. But
why would EMC/Cisco want to join in?

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brudgers
Presumably Nortel's patent portfolio contains a significant number of patents
which could be applied to networking because Nortel had it's roots as a phone
company.

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tom_b
Exactly - Nortel had a big portfolio of phone switches (the DMS-10 and DMS-100
are the two that leap to mind) and I would assume a rich collection of switch
patents as well.

Too bad they blew up - can anyone recommend a good write-up about their
implosion? I interned there and had a job offer that was rescinded around the
time the dot com bust occurred. My recollection is that they heavily leveraged
themselves to make a run at beating Cisco in the IP switch market. When
everything melted down, they had nowhere to run.

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blinkingled
MG is happy. It worked for Apple and Google was left out. That's all there is
to the post. I naively expected some more details.

