Nortel, Google in $900 million patent deal

[onehandle]

Source: Reuters

TORONTO (Reuters) – Bankrupt Nortel Networks has reached a deal to sell its patent portfolio to Google for $900 million, kick-starting an auction process for assets coveted as weaponry for a growing wireless patent war.

Nortel said on Monday the planned sale includes around 6,000 patents and patent applications covering wireless, wireless 4G, data networking, optical, voice, Internet, service provision and semiconductors.

Interest in the patents has been robust, but the timeline for a deal has been delayed as Nortel's liquidators and potential buyers haggled over price.

Nortel will now begin an auction process to allow other potential buyers to improve on Google's offer.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110404/tc_nm/us_nortel_patents_1

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If this goes through, this will be bad bad bad.

Google's monopoly on communications is starting to make the monopolies of Microsoft, AT&T, and General Electric look like chicken feed.

The patents should be broken up and sold to multiple unrelated companies.

[melm00se]

1. there is no guarantee that

google's bid will win.

Others expected to bid include Chinese telecom network company ZTE, Ericsson, which bought most of Nortel's wireless operations, and RPX, which licenses patents on behalf of member clients for a fee.

The so-called stalking horse bid with Google sets a minimum price for other bidders, which can use that offer and its terms as a starting point for their own proposals.
A stalking horse bidder typically receives a break-up fee if its bid does not go through, and it can use that fee in subsequent auction rounds.