Rockstar Consortium, the very controversial Apple-backed tech company has agreed to sell around 4,000 of its patents acquired from the now bankrupt Nortel Networks. This move from Rockstar to sell several of its patents to RPX Clearinghouse will help lessen lawsuit from its clients because of patent infringement issues.
After the sale of the patents, RPX is expected to license all of it to more than 30 tech companies who also vied control of Nortel Network patent portfolio. These companies include tech giants Cisco Systems and Google. Rockstar is hoping that the sale of these patents will terminate the ongoing infringement lawsuits filed against them by different companies. One of the companies involved in the lawsuit over Nortel patents, Cisco stated that the deal is a "victory for common sense."
Rockstar Consortium managed to get hold of the Nortel patents after a high-controversial deal of $4.5 billion, along with unwavering support from tech giants' Microsoft, Sony, BlackBerry, Ericsson and most notably Apple.
It is reported that PRX will be paying around $900 million for the patent deal from Rockstar. RPX will then sell these patents to more than 30 companies, the license payments will then be paid back to Rockstar.
After the deal is done, the companies who will acquire the patents will receive non-exclusive rights to Rockstar's patents. RPX also reported that these patents will be made available for license to other companies who will be interest as long as they agree with the FRAND terms. FRAND is also known as Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory.
Despite the current positive development in patent related lawsuits over different tech giants, Samsung and Apple still continue their fracas over patent infringements in the district court of California. Nevertheless, both companies have agreed to end their litigation about patent violation outside of the United States.
Microsoft vice president and deputy general counsel Erich Andersen said in an official statement; "We joined Rockstar to ensure that both Microsoft and our industry would have broad access to the Nortel patent portfolio, and we're pleased to have accomplished that goal through this sale and our valuable license to the patents being sold."
