Friday, December 13, 2024

Patent Acquisitions – What’s Behind Them

If recent news is any indicator, patents are extremely valuable assets! During 2011, Nortel Networks Corporation sold 6,000 patents for $4.5 billion to a technology consortium that included Apple, Microsoft and RIM. Shortly thereafter, Google bought, in one of the largest patent deals in history, more than 24,000 patents and patent applications from Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. Since 2011, IBM has sold more than 2,000 patents to Google for an undisclosed price. And now, Kodak, under the mandate of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, is trying to sell 1,100 of its patents for $3 billion.