It's official: Nortel patent sale approved by US and Canadian courts

[Bob369963]

It's official: Nortel patent sale approved by US and Canadian courts (updated)

By Michael Gorman posted Jul 12th 2011 7:43AM



Nortel was just looking for some quick cash when the company put its 6,000 telecommunications patents up for auction. Then Google decided that IP would make a mighty fine troll deterrent, and started a crazy bidding war to get it. A coalition of the willing -- including Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, RIM, and Sony -- opposed Big G and paid $4.5 billion for the prize portfolio pending approval by the powers that be. Well, both Canadian and US bankruptcy judges just gave the purchase two thumbs up, and the deal is officially done. Now the question is whether the auction's victors will use these patents as a shield against those with trollish intentions or as a sword to strike at their enemies?

Update: To clarify, the deal was only approved by the bankruptcy courts, and the US DOJ is examining the sale for its possible anti-competitive effects.
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[Matt-aka-FAST]

nortel can go fuck themselves K THANKS!

 

[Bob369963]

In the networking world they owned a lot. Not sure of the details in the patents being sold, but could prove interesting in coming business set ups.

 

[Soldier4Real]

It kind of sucks because we own two large Nortel PBX's. Now anytime you order anything it's the same product but it has big Avaya decals on it since that's who bought them out. They also sold a large block (666,624) of IPv4 addresses to Nortel a few months back for 7.5 million dollars.

The Microsoft Update: Microsoft pays Nortel $7.5 million for IPv4 addresses