Who Won The 6,000+ Nortel Patents? Apple, RIM, Microsoft — Everyone But Google

It kind of feels like when you're winning in Risk early on and all the other players band together just to destroy you. Sure, it's not against the rules, and it's good strategy, but you still think they're all dicks.

Maybe I'm wrong here, but I'm going to assume that Google did its due diligence, came up with a value to bid on the patents (that includes future costs of law suits, royalties owed/earned, as well as new technologies derived from the patents) and made that bid.<p>In that case, what their opponents pay (or perhaps, overpay) is no longer Google's concern. That's the mindset you have to take in an auction.

What's the status of the patents in the package?<p>Looking up random patents from a (2006) list of Nortel patents (<a href="http://www.nortel.com/corporate/technology/patents/collateral/list_of_nortel_patents_0506.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.nortel.com/corporate/technology/patents/collatera...</a>) yields things like "Patent Expired Due to NonPayment of Maintenance Fees Under 37 CFR 1.362" (<a href="http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/!ut/p/c5/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os3h3cz9XEzcPIwMLvyALA08jF39LE2cjQwMLU6B8JG55dxNKdBuYEtAdDnItftvxyYPMB8kb4ACOBvp-Hvm5qfqR-lHmCFPcff3dgKa4ebh5BxgZG7gb6UfmpKYnJlfqF-SGRhhkBmQEOioqAgBVda8T/dl3/d3/L0lJSklna21DU1EhIS9JRGpBQU15QUJFUkNKRXFnLzRGR2dzbzBWdnphOUlBOW9JQSEhLzdfRzdORTRGSDIwR01PRjBJMkZIRktQMjMwRzIvWnM3MV81NjE2MDAxNi9zYS5nZXRCaWI!/" rel="nofollow">http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/!ut/p/c5/04_SB8K8xLL...</a>)<p>It's possible that those 6000+ patents contain only a handful which are (a) strategically useful (b) not defunct and (c) won't expire in the next few years. After all, when's the last time Microsoft got a good deal on something?

This seems an awful lot like collusion (IANAL), and if it isn't illegal, it sure feels like it should be.<p>Google should have gotten in on the deal with the rest to pay a bit more and open-source them all.

Wow. If there was any proof needed that patents seldom help the "underdog", here it is.

This is such a pointless and counter-productive war.

One of their mistakes was to publicly announce they were placing a major bid to protect themselves against patent litigation. Their opponents sensed weakness and trashed the party. This will be yet another business case for corporate secrecy.

Why didn't Google gather around all the Android manufacturers from the beginning and make a pool with them? Why did they risk losing the patents by going at it alone?<p>It only took Apple to try to bid for them, and they could've beaten Google if they <i>really</i> wanted, simply because they can afford to lose more cash than Google. Google should've considered this from the beginning. And in reality it was even worse, it more allied against them to get the patents, so Apple didn't even have to bother too much for them.<p>I think it was a newbie mistake to not get all Android manufacturers or the whole OHA to pay for them.

Does the word <i>cartel</i> mean anything to the DOJ? I guess we'll find out.<p>Now, why was EMC in the cartel? My first reaction was that this is the higher margin companies ganging up to defeat the low cost free software strategy. But why would EMC/Cisco want to join in?

MG is happy. It worked for Apple and Google was left out. That's all there is to the post. I naively expected some more details.