Google has bid $900 million for patents and patent applications belonging to bankrupt Nortel Networks, the once-powerful telecommunications equipment maker.
Nortel on Monday announced that it has entered a “stalking horse asset sale agreement" with Google to sell roughly 6,000 patents and patent applications covering a range of patent portfolios, including wireless, wireless 4G, data networking, optical, voice, Internet, service provider and semiconductors.
Nortel said it will file the agreement with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware and include a motion that seeks the establishment of bidding procedures for an auction that would allow other qualified bidders to submit higher or better offers than Google. The company also will file a similar motion with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
Kent Walker, senior vice president and general counsel of Google, wrote in a blog that “an explosion in patent litigation “threatens to stifle innovation."
“If successful, we hope this portfolio will not only create a disincentive for others to sue Google, but also help us, our partners and the open source community – which is integrally involved in projects like Android and Chrome – continue to innovate," Walker wrote.
The former telecom equipment-making giant filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and has since sold itself off in pieces, leaving many retirees and ex-workers in a long battle to save their pensions, a fight that has proved to be mostly unsuccessful.
