Mosaid, the Ottawa developer of wireless IC technology, has acquired Core Wireless Licensing which owns 2,000 patents filed by Nokia. The deal brings the number of Mosaid’s patents to 5,400.
The move reflects the growing value put on patents following the $4.5bn sale of Nortel’s patents, the $12.5bn sale of Motorola Mobility to Google – allegedly valued so high because of the value of its patents, and the $3bn+ value put on the upcoming sale of InterDigital’s patents.
At the 3G wireless generation, Qualcomm extracted billions of dollars in licensing fees for licensing CDMA IP.
The Nokia patents bought by Mosaid ‘cover technologies used in a wide range of mobile communications devices and services,’ says Mosaid, ‘ one hundred of the patent families, consisting of approximately 1,200 patents and applications, have been declared essential to second, third and fourth-generation communications standards, including GSM (Global Systems for Mobile communications), UMTS / WCDMA (Universal Mobile Telecommunications Service / Wide-Band Code Division Multiple Access) and LTE (Long Term Evolution). The rest of the portfolio consists of approximately 800 wireless implementation patents.’
Mosaid will fund its acquisition of the portfolio through royalties from future licensing and enforcement revenues and will record all future royalties received from monetizing the patents as revenue.
Mosaid says it expects the Nokia patent portfolio to generate more revenue than it has made in its 36 year lifetime – over $1bn. In its last recorded quarter it had revenues of $18.3m.
Mosaid will take one third of the revenues generated by the patent portfolio and the Nokia and Microsoft will take the other two thirds. The move is seen as a way for Nokia to cash in on its patents without seeming predatory.