# Nortel sells off patents for $4.5 bill



## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

That's right, $4.5 billion!!



> In the biggest patent auction in history, Canadian telecommunications equipment manufacturer Nortel Networks Corp. NRTLQ +42.00% said Friday it has divested all of its remaining patents and patent applications, with a consortium including heavyweight technology firms Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson ERIC -0.29% , Apple Inc. AAPL -0.05% , and Microsoft Corp. MSFT -0.08% emerging as the winning bidder.





> Nortel's portfolio includes around 6,000 patents and patent applications in telecommunications, Internet search and social networking, and covers mobile, long-term evolution and data networking as well as optical, Internet, service pro"


Obviously innovation was not their weakness


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## kcowan (Jul 1, 2010)

mode3sour said:


> That's right, $4.5 billion!!
> Obviously innovation was not their weakness


Maybe there will some money left over for their pensioners like my son's FIL.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

mode3sour said:


> That's right, $4.5 billion!!
> 
> Obviously innovation was not their weakness


No, the talent they hired for BNR and later on Nortel were very
skilled in coming up with innovation. On that basis alone, they were
very strong and ahead of the competition.

What brought them down (IMO as a former employee) was overexpansion
and too much hype about what they wanted to do in the future, rather
than manage the bottom line. 

When you are operating several development labs in different countries
and having over 80,000 on the payroll....you better have a market for
the products created...and unfortunately, those markets dried up from 2000
onwards. Cooking the books to make the profit margin better than what
it was also was not the way to instill investor confidence.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

kcowan said:


> Maybe there will some money left over for their pensioners like my son's FIL.


Hard to say. The pensioners have a legal firm working on their behalf in
regards to getting whatever they can from the sale of the Nortel assets,
but Canada's current bankruptcy laws don't see pensioners any different
than any other creditors, including junk bond holders. 

Any preferred creditors will get pretty much all their money out of the sale
of the assets, the rest will (depending on the bankruptcy court) will get
a few cents on the dollar claims submitted. 
This is a lesson to be learned by all.


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