Mikey Campbell
Despite ongoing legal struggles with Google subsidiary Motorola, Apple has reportedly teamed up with the internet search giant to offer a bid for Kodak patents worth over $500 million.
On Friday, Bloomberg cited two people familiar with Kodak's ongoing bankruptcy proceedings who claim Apple and Google have become partners in a grab for 1,100 patents owned by the erstwhile photography monolith. Sources say the Apple-Google consortium was behind a bid placed a bid earlier this week.
When bidding first started, the companies led two separate teams, with Apple's consortium including Microsoft and patent holdings firm Intellectual Ventures, while Google joined up with RPX Corp. and a number of Asian handset manufacturers. At the time, it was thought that HTC and Samsung were part of Google's team.
Before the imaging patent auction began in August, Kodak estimated the value of its portfolio to fall between $2.2 and $2.6 billion, though the first round of bids were reportedly in the range of $150 million to $250 million. Under the terms of Kodak's $793 million loan agreement, the winning bid for the portfolio must not be lower than $500 million.
Interestingly, Kodak previously leveraged patents in a suit against Apple and HTC, as well as an ITC case against Apple and RIM, as a last-ditch effort to stay afloat. Apple subsequently took action and sued Kodak after claiming ownership of ten patents related to the QuickTake camera, which was a cooperative project between the two companies. A judge ultimately ordered the Cupertino, Calif., company to halt current and future litigation so the bankruptcy proceedings could continue.
In November, sources claimed both Apple and Google remained interested in the patent cache, and Kodak said it was "confident" that the minimum woud be reached.
Charles Martin
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
AppleInsider Staff
23 Comments
Apple should just use that huge cash hoard to buy patents from anywhere and everywhere so no asses can continue to buy up a patent and then sue others like these patent trolls. I find that a great investment. They could license them free or for a penny but atleast they would be out of the hands of the patent trolls and would add more value to the company's stock price.
This is another reason why I think Tim Cook should grow a pair and just take some of that cash hoard and buy all those patents on their own. What's the big deal? Apple would generate that $500 million back in less than a month's time. This is one of the reasons why Apple is treated with absolutely no respect on Wall Street and why Android is walking all over Apple. Apple needs to take all the patents it can and just kneecap Google. Wall Street favors Google for everything, so screw them. With Apple just sitting back and letting all its rivals take everything, Apple shareholders are going to end up in deep doo-doo. Screw trying to play the nice guy. Wall Street eats nice guys for lunch. If I'm going to get screwed as a shareholder because I'm not getting any of that reserve cash, then Google shareholders should feel some pain, too. But no, Apple shareholders are going to take a solitary reaming because Tim Cook wants to be sweet. Eff that! Google spent $12.5 billion of its own money on Motorola but at least it got something back and the stock went up quite a bit. Nothing Apple buys ever moves the stock upward, only down.
This whole story is probably just a rumor but I need to vent to relieve my frustration from Apple's continued loss of share value.
It's a rumor, but I doubt Apple wants to be a sole proprietor in hording tech patents. It silences legal claims and puts Kodak's patents on the shelf.
$500M? Why didn't they sell them before they went bankrupt, to keep going?
It's not an entirely new story. I myself mentioned a rumored Apple and Google partnership to bid on these weeks ago, and I knew from an article printed weeks before that back in Sept or earlier.