Apple & Microsoft-Backed Rockstar Consortium Battles Google and Samsung Over 7 Nortel Patents

Share This Post

Well, at the moment, it does look like a ‘never ending’ war between this two parties. “The Rockstar consortium is an organization backed by Apple, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Ericsson and Sony. It purchased patents off of the defunct telecommunications company Nortel in 2011, in a bidding war with Google.

Now, the consortium has filed suit against Google, ASUSTek, HTC, Huawei, LG, Pantech and ZTE over those patents. The suit was filed in a U.S. District Court of Eastern Texas today.

“Google placed an initial bid of $900,000,000 for the patents-in-suit and the rest of the Nortel portfolio. Google subsequently increased its bid multiple times, ultimately bidding as high as $4.4 billion,” the filing states. “That price was insufficient to win the auction, as a group led by the current shareholders of Rockstar purchased the portfolio for $4.5 billion. Despite losing in its attempt to acquire the patents-in-suit at auction, Google has infringed and continues to infringe the patents-in-suit.”

Google famously bid some not-so-random numbers before the end, including ‘pi’. The suit also involves a licensee of the ‘Associative Search Engine’ 6,098,065 patent, NetStar, Inc.

The other patents are US 7,236,969, 7,469,245, 7,672,970, 7,895,178, 7,895,183 and 7,933,883. They’re mostly fairly dry stuff related to database searches, relevance in advertising presentation and data sorting, but exactly the kind of stuff that makes Google’s special sauce work. We can’t speak to the strength of the patents, but they certainly appear to be relevant.” said techcrunch on their website, “Google lost out in a heated bidding war against Rockstar and went on to acquire Motorola, a move that many attributed to a patent grab, but that was also about hardware in a lot of ways.

Notably, HTC has a cross-licensing agreement with Apple on some patents, but apparently not these. News of the suit was first reported by Reuters today.”

Stay Ahead: Join the EwtNet Insider Email Club!

Stay informed and up-to-date with EwtNet's email subscription. Join our exclusive community and receive curated news, updates, and insights tailored to your interests.

Related Posts

Microsoft deal delivers ‘free’ 100GB of OneDrive storage

If you're the type of person who can never...

Google will Pay $3.2B in Cash for Connected Device Company Nest

Google is acquiring connected device company Nest for $3.2...

Best Android vs. Apple Comparisons for Business Owners

When given a choice between Android and Apple, we...

New: Save your Message Attachments on Google Drive via your Gmail Interface

Today, Google officially announced the release of a new...

Google Quietly Updates Gmail for Android to Suite your Holiday Travels

It’s always kind of a drag when your mobile...

Window shop this Holiday season at home with the help of Google Maps

  The leisurely window-shopper might be forgiven for feeling...
- Advertisement -

Discover more from EwtNet

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading