Rockstar Consortium is reportedly looking for buyers of a portion of the patents it acquired from Nortel Networks Corp. in 2011.
Back in 2011, Apple, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Ericsson, and Sony teamed up to form Rockstar Consortium Inc. to take on Google in acquiring about 4,000 patents and applications of the then-bankrupt Nortel Networks Corp. They pooled in $4.5 billion to win the bid. Now, it seemed that the consortium realized that it doesn’t need all those patents and decided to sell some of it to interested buyers.
According to sources of Bloomberg who wished to be kept confidential, Rockstar didn’t achieve that much success in closing profitable licensing deals. The consortium went after the patents in 2011 because the demand was high back then.
Sources added that some of the patents were already acquired by licensing company Spherix Inc. in July. The company has paid $1 million-worth of stock, an undisclosed amount of cash, and portion of future earnings from the acquired patents.
None of the companies included in the consortium responded when asked for comments related to the report. However, sources mentioned that Rockstar is also willing to sell the patents on those who have existing lawsuits for infringing the patents.
Rockstar could be talking about Google Inc, HTC, Samsung, and four others. In November, news broke out that it has filed a lawsuit against these companies for allegedly infringing Nortel patents. Google was accused of infringing seven patents of the “Associative Search Engine” integrated in its search engine related to advertising, Reuters reported.
Samsung and HTC, on the other hand, allegedly infringed seven patents of the "Navigation Tool for Graphical User Interface." The said technology is used by Apple's archrival to support its Gallery, Email, Maps, and Browser functions. Aside from the navigation patent, the company is also being sued for another patent called "Internet Protocol Filter" that allows the device to become a mobile wireless hotspot by sharing its Internet data.
