Justice Department Eying Nortel Patent Sale
Aug 1, 2011, 3:18 PM by Eric M. Zeman
According to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Department of Justice plans to scrutinize the recent batch of patents auctioned off by Nortel to a consortium of tech companies led by Apple. The Journal's sources say that the Justice Department is worried Apple, RIM, Microsoft and their partners will use the recently won patents to "unfairly hobble competing smartphones" that run Google's Android platform. Google itself participated in the auction, but its bid of $3.145 billion fell short of the $4.5 billion winning bid placed by Rockstar Bidco, the Apple-led consortium. The Justice Department wants to know if the companies that won the patents plan to use them defensively of offensively in future patent litigation against Google and others. The Justice Department individually vetted Apple, RIM, and others before the auction took place, and gave them permission to participate. The Justice Department has not formally announced an investigation.
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Comments
This Is How I See This.
Marketshare and control.
Apple wants to dominate; not compete. Alone, they can compete within the balance of multiple competition, but not necessarily win the marketshare dominance over Android.
By suddenly forming a coalition from the remaining competition to out bid the largest mobile platform, it should not be hard to see the intentions of this. Apple does not consider the others competition. They will claim majority ownership of this purchase. Once the Nortel patents become used as an across the board standard in the industry by this allied group, marketshare of said patents will have an immense change in the...
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