Nortel's patent weapon

Perhaps some are aware of the story around Canadian Nortel Telecom, which in January 2009 asked the government for bankruptcy protection. The financial situation in the company is obviously far from being the most favorable, so Nortel began to group its own patents into packages for sale to interested companies. Several big names immediately expressed their interest in buying highly valued patents in the key of 3G / 4G technologies: Google, Apple, RIM. In total, this package has about 6000 different papers.

And if Google, the first to express its desire to acquire the aforementioned patents, pursues exceptionally good intentions (such as “protecting a relatively young company from present and future patent predators”), offering a starting rate of $ 900 million per package, then Apple’s intentions have already earned the attention of the US Department of Justice.

And the reason for this is very simple and obvious. According to The Wall Street Journal , the ministry "did not find any serious obstacles to the acquisition of a patent portfolio by Google." What can not be said about Apple - the government is seriously worried that the technologies transferred from Nortel will allow lawyers from Cupertino to conduct an even more aggressive policy of lawsuits. History shows that the chances of such behavior are very, very high.
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In other words, if the Ministry feels calm about the fact that Google will not behave arrogantly after acquiring new patents, then in the case of Apple there is no such certainty. Quite the contrary - representatives of justice are confident that for Apple, control over the portfolio will result in a new round of proceedings.

Alexander Poltorak, CEO of General Patent Corp. told the WSJ correspondent that: "You are buying a package of nuclear weapons in the world of patents."

It is possible that these are only idle fears - after all, Apple has not even officially confirmed its participation in the bidding, which will take place very soon, on June 20. But, again, considering the stakes in this game, the presence of Apple at the gaming table seems very likely. As for RIM, which according to Bloomberg is also interested in Nortel patents, it is unlikely to attract the attention of the Ministry, being a much smaller company compared to the “big boys”, Google and Apple.

But do not forget about one more, much more serious player in the patent market - Microsoft.

In fact, no one believes that Microsoft will try to acquire this portfolio from Nortel, and there are several reasons for this. First, Microsoft has licensed agreements to use Nortel's proprietary technologies, which will continue regardless of who owns the latter. And this is definitely good news for Microsoft, because if the Ministry was interested in Apple’s motives, then if Microsoft participated in the bidding, they would start pointing at it and say, “Killer!”

Microsoft is famous for a very bloody history of lawsuits with various companies, most of which it wins. But, more importantly, in the technological environment of Microsoft - the king of patents (not counting the old IBM). If Apple has anywhere from 4 to 5,000 patents (which allows it to behave impudently), then Microsoft has ... 17,000.

What about the number of patents at Google? They say that there are about 1000 of them. Having received more than 6 thousand Nortel patents, Google will automatically overtake Apple, but it will still be far behind Microsoft. If Apple gets the package, the total number of technologies owned by the company will be close to 10,000. Microsoft, in the event of a purchase, will have almost 25,000 securities, which will literally sue your grandmother from scratch.

But, of course, the matter is not in quantity, but in intent. Google simply never behaved aggressively, and did not start patent wars. In truth, in the history of the company there is not a single case when she filed a lawsuit against someone for violating her patent (once Google’s aggression was seen, but only as a protective counter-measure, after which the original prosecutor withdrew his lawsuit, and the story ended without bloodshed).

It can be argued that Google does not behave in this way because of the small number of patents in its hands, but the US Department of Justice believes that even when acquiring a Nortel portfolio, the situation with the search giant will not change, because all patents will be used for development technologies that have little impact on Google’s revenue: Android and Chrome. Apple, in turn, will have to be extremely persuasive and lead a truly iron arguments "goodwill".

Let me remind you, the auction will be held on June 20. Approaching this date, we will learn more and more interesting details.

The publication is written using information from TechCrunch , ArsTechnica , Bloomberg , The Wall Street Journal