The fight for Nortel’s 6,000+ patents seems to be heating up. Google is in with a $900 million bid and rumours are that RIM will be submitting a bid too. The Nortel patents include data networking, voice and Internet service and advanced 4G wireless technologies and “two people familiar with the plans” are also stating that Ericsson is going to be jumping in and making an offer. Bloomberg is reporting that Ericsson might team up with another organization to bid on the patents but the plans aren’t final. Apparently Google, Microsoft and Intel have all been approached and the reason why Ericsson might join forces is because they’re only interested in the non-telecom-related patents and would release the phone patents to the possible partner.
Ericsson spokeswoman Patricia MacLean declined to comment on the rumour but stated that “Ericsson has a large patent portfolio and is always looking to expand it”. According to the bidding rules the next submission has to be $929 million, but analysts believe the Nortel patents will top $1 billion.
Source: Bloomberg
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