A report earlier this month said that Apple and Google were heading up separate groups to bid on Kodak’s portfolio of digital imaging patents. Now The Wall Street Journal reports that the two camps may be teaming up to get the patents at a price well below what Kodak is hoping for.
The bidding group brings together a raft of strange bedfellows. It includes Apple Inc. and Google Inc., fierce competitors in the global smartphone market. It also includes Intellectual Ventures Management LLC, which buys up patents to seek licensing revenue and increasingly sue other companies for infringement, and RPX Corp., which buys patents to keep them from being used against its members in suits.
Sources familiar with the matter say the consortium also includes Samsung Electronics Co., LG Electronics Inc. and HTC Corp. All three companies manufacture smartphones based on Google’s Android architecture.
The report notes that the consortium is looking to purchase Kodak’s patents for “more than $500 million”, which is above opening bids, but nowhere near the $2.2 – $2.6 billion Kodak had been hoping to win.
If the consortium can obtain the patents, it could help limit later litigation by keeping them out of the hands of a single company. However, antitrust regulators would probably want to take a look at the move.
So far, Kodak has extended bidding several times, and could always pull some or all of the patents from the auction if it doesn’t feel the bids are not where they need to be to help Kodak get through its bankruptcy problems.
