American patent risk management company RPX Corp. entered into an agreement to acquire approximately 4,000 patents owned by Rockstar, a consortium led by Apple Inc. and other technology companies, for US$ 900M. Rockstar had been established as a patent holding entity in 2011 by Apple, Microsoft, Blackberry, Sony, and Ericsson, with the principal purpose of acquiring the 6,000 patents of Nortel Network Corp. following that company’s bankruptcy. The Nortel patents were purchased by the consortium for US$ 4.5B. Approximately 2,000 of the most valuable patents had already been distributed to the Rockstar stakeholders prior to the RPX transaction.<\/p>\n
Following its acquisition of the Nortel patents, the Rockstar consortium filed a number of patent infringement suits against several technology companies, including Google, which was sued in connection with its Android mobile operating system. Rockstar also brought proceedings against Cisco, LG, HTC, Samsung, Huawei, Asus, Pantech, and ZTE. In November 2014, Rockstar settled its lawsuits against Google and Cisco. In disclosures to its investors in early November, Cisco had indicated that it had recorded a pretax charge of US$ 188M to settle the Rockstar action against it.<\/p>\n
The agreement with RPX was intended to bring to a close all remaining suits filed by Rockstar, including those against Samsung, HTC, LG, and Huawei Technologies. RPX indicated that it planned to licence the acquired patents to a group of more than 30 technology companies, including Google and Cisco.<\/p>\n
John Amster, chief executive officer of RPX, stated in a press release:<\/p>\n
I think people have started to realize that licensing, not litigation, is the best way to make use of patents, and this deal is a significant acknowledgment of that reality.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
He further stated:<\/p>\n
We are pleased to act as clearinghouse and underwrite an agreement between the owners of Rockstar and our syndicate of licenses.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Significance for RPX<\/h2>\n
The acquisition was described as highly significant for RPX, which since its establishment in 2008 has operated as a defensive patent aggregator, protecting member companies from patent infringement claims without itself using patents to bring litigation. RPX provides access to its patent portfolio to approximately 200 client members. Prior to this transaction, RPX had invested US$ 890M to acquire more than 4,900 patents. The Rockstar acquisition substantially enlarged that portfolio while simultaneously extinguishing the pending litigation risk associated with the Rockstar patents.<\/p>\n
Disclaimer<\/h2>\n
This article is for general information and does not constitute legal advice. Readers should consult a qualified attorney before acting on any matter discussed here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RPX Corp. is acquiring around 4,000 patents from Apple\u2019s Rockstar Consortium for US$ 900 million, effectively ending several major patent lawsuits. This deal highlights a move from litigation to licensing in managing high-value technology patents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":47,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,22,14],"tags":[225,6927,3567,158,6926,12821,6928],"class_list":["post-17733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intellectual-property","category-ip-commercialization-licensing","category-patents","tag-apple","tag-nortel-patents","tag-patent-acquisition","tag-patent-litigation","tag-rockstar-consortium","tag-rpx-rockstar-patents-acquisition","tag-technology-companies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17733"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149715,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17733\/revisions\/149715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}