Katie MarsalCiting anonymous sources, John Paczkowski of Digital Daily reported Monday that the four companies are competing to buy 4G wireless technologies from Nortel. The company owns patents related to Long-Term Evolution and Service Architecture Evolution.
One source said that the winner of Nortel's patents would gain "a hell of an advantage" in the smartphone race. Phone makers are currently engaged in a plethora of lawsuits, and Apple and Nokia in particular find themselves in a complex legal battle that is expected to take years.
Last week, Reuters reported on Nortel's patent sales, and noted that sources said they "expect" Apple and Google to bid on the wireless technology. Monday's latest report, however, goes a step further to claim that the two tech giants have gone as far as to bid.
Nortel has reportedly completed one round of bidding on the patents, and has separated the inventions into different lots defined by the type of technology. The total collection of patents cover a number of wide-ranging technologies, including wireless handsets, wireless network infrastructure, optical and data networking, Internet, Internet advertising and more.
Final bids for Nortel's patents are due in a matter of weeks, but none of the four major handset makers rumored to be in the running have commented on the matter.
The patent-collecting arms race in the wireless industry has led to a number of lawsuits between all of the major players in the market. In addition to Nokia, Apple is currently engaged in legal battles with Motorola and HTC, two lawsuits that are seen primarily as an indirect attack on the Google Android mobile operating system.
A recent report indicated that Apple has been forced to "lawyer up" as it is the most-sued tech company in the world. As a result, the Cupertino, Calif., company has allegedly hired some of the nation's top patent lawyers as outside counsel.
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29 Comments
Good luck out-bidding Apple, with their war chest...
Good luck out-bidding Apple, with their war chest...
Interestingly Qualcomm is not in the scene
Gosh what a surprise Google wanting something Apple wants.
One source said that the winner of Nortel's patents would gain "a hell of an advantage" in the smartphone race. Phone makers are currently engaged in a plethora of lawsuits, and Apple and Nokia in particular find themselves in a complex legal battle that is expected to take years.
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I hope that the feds step in and prevent any one of them from gaining such an advantage. We need competition among carriers if we are to see prices fall for consumers. If a big handset maker has an exclusive, then everyone else is at a huge disadvantage. Especially consumers.
Good luck out-bidding Apple, with their war chest...
This. Although even when the competition seems to hold useful or otherwise advantageous patents that enable them to do great things, they don't. It seems whatever patents exist or are being contested at any given time, Apple is usually the one to churn out great products an redefine markets.
I've jokingly said before that the competition should simply hand over their patents to Apple, who will actually do something impressive with them. An unlikely proposition that sounds absurd, obviously, but you get the basic idea.