The Apple backed Rockstar Consortium, a patent holding firm created by Apple, BlackBerry, Ericsson, Microsoft, and Sony to obtain thousands of telecom patents from Nortel, has agreed to sell much of their patent portfolio to IP risk migration company RPK.
The sale will see RPX pay some $900 million for more than 4,000 patents, according to the Wall Street Journal. It will include “the bulk” of Rockstar’s portfolio, though it remains unclear which patents will be held back and how they will be disposed of.
Rockstar also agrees to end all ongoing litigation against Samsung, LG, HTC, and Huawei.
RPX licenses and purchases patents to protect its clients – which includes Google, Cisco, and others – who can then use the patents to protect themselves against infringement lawsuits. RPX has agreed not to use the patents in any offensive actions.
Rockstar paid over $4.5 billion for over 6,000 Nortel patents in 2011, dividing the most important ones among themselves, and leaving Rockstar to work out licensing deals for the rest. The 2,000 patents assigned directly to the partners are not included in the RPX sale.
