Rockstar Consortium, a group of leading tech companies including Apple, RIM and Ericsson, looks set to complete its acquisition of patents from bankrupt Canadian vendor Nortel Networks. Rockstar said in a statement that the US Department of Justice’s…
Rockstar Consortium, a group of leading tech companies including Apple, RIM and Ericsson, looks set to complete its acquisition of patents from bankrupt Canadian vendor Nortel Networks.
Rockstar said in a statement that the US Department of Justice’s waiting period of review for the deal had expired and the companies are now free to complete the deal.
Rockstar said that the deal involved a “substantial majority” of Nortel’s patent portfolio, which is made up of around 4,000 patents relating to a wide range of networking, communications and internet technologies. The consortium has invested US$4.5bn to acquire this portfolio.
Rockstar’s CEO, John Veschi, said: “We are pleased to emerge from this review process, and are looking forward to working with technology related companies to provide them with access to Rockstar’s technology.”
Rockstar Consortium is jointly owned by Apple, Ericsson, Microsoft, RIM and Sony.
Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection in January 2009 and has since sold off large parts of its business.
The consortium emerged as the winning bidder for the Nortel patent portfolio in June 2011, after Google had made an initial stalking horse bid of US$900m.
