When a lot of Google’s competitors got together to buy over 6,000 patents from failing Nortel, there was really only one goal – blow up Google. The first signs of this action are now starting to take form.
Canada-based telecom Nortel went bankrupt in 2009 and sold its biggest asset—a portfolio of more than 6,000 patents covering 4G wireless innovations and a range of technologies—at an auction in 2011.
Google bid for the patents, but didn’t get them. Instead, they went to a group of competitors—Microsoft, Apple, RIM, Ericsson, and Sony—operating under the name “Rockstar Bidco.” The companies together bid the shocking sum of $4.5 billion.