Apple Has Outright Ownership of Nortel Patents?

Apple put up $2 billion of its consortium's $4.5 billion winning bid for Nortel's patents, giving it outright ownership of certain patents, according to I, Cringely.

Cringely reports that RIM and Ericsson joined together to contribute $1.1 billion towards the bid with Ericsson getting a fully paid-up license and RIM getting a paid-up license plus possibly some carry forward operating losses from Nortel.

Microsoft and Sony were said to have contributed another $1 billion and EMC contributed $400 million for sole ownership of an unspecified subset of patents.


Apple is said to have contributed the largest portion for sole ownership of patents that will strengthen itself against Google and Android.

Finally Apple put up $2 billion for outright ownership of Nortel's Long Term Evolution (4G) patents as well as another package of patents supposedly intended to hobble Android.

Cringely expects Google to file an anti-trust lawsuit almost immediately.

Read More [via MacRumors]