Vringo to acquire 500 Nokia patents…for $22m :/

DailyMobile reports that around 500 Nokia patents have been bought by Vringo for a sum of about  $22 million, of which Nokia gets 35% of any royalties should Vringo exceed a $22m revenue. I am not even going to try and pretend I understand the significance of which patents are up for sale, but the excerpt says:

Thirty-one of the 124 patent families acquired have been declared essential by Nokia to wireless communications standards. Standards represented in the portfolio are commonly known as 2G, 2.5G, 3G and 4G and related technologies and include GSM, WCDMA, T63, T64, DECT, IETF, LTE, SAE, and OMA.

http://www.dailymobile.net/2012/08/09/nokia-to-sell-500-patents-to-vringo/

Note, not all patents are of equal value, so we can’t just assume that such a more patents = higher value. In my extremely limited view, Nokia could be trying to monetize the patents that they have which could possibly be sitting idle, concentrating further into core aspects of smartphone production. Or, Nokia could be selling the silverware in preparation of minimising the losses from the duds that we’ll see in September. Got your wads of cash ready for your new iPhone/Droid?

More on this story:

• http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/09/vringo-nokia-patent-sale/
• http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/08/09/mobile-tech-firm-vringo-to-sell-31-2m-worth-of-stock-to-buy-ip-from-nokia-and-more/
• http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120809-711134.html

Category: Nokia