Rockstart Consortium, the patent holding company jointly owned by Apple, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Sony and Ericsson is selling its remaining patents to RPX Corp for $900 million.
The deal involves the aforementioned companies selling 4,000 patents to RPX, a patent broker, which in turn will issue licenses to another group of about 30 tech companies including Google and Cisco. Rockstar Consortium was formed from the $4.5 billion purchase of about 6,000 Nortel Network Corp patents in 2011 following its bankruptcy. Approximately 2,000 of these patent assets were previously distributed to various Rockstar owners and are not part of this transaction.
“We are pleased to act as a clearinghouse and underwrite an agreement between the owners of Rockstar and our syndicate of licensees. Leading technology companies from multiple industries came together to shape this transaction. We commend everyone involved for their leadership and commitment to clearing the risk of the Rockstar portfolio by negotiating a reasonable purchase price in one efficient transaction.”
said John A. Amster, Chief Executive and Co-founder of RPX.
The agreement will also end the lawsuits that Rockstar had previously filed again a number of Android smartphone companies, including Samsung, HTC, LG and Huawei.
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