Why does amazon need a smartphone? They developed the Kindle product to save its old book business as did Barnes & Noble with Nook. They have no synergy with cell phones.

This patent debate is hilarious because nobody has stated what the patents are and the remaining useful life. You can't "comp" patent portfolios because they are all different.

Nortel was twice as many patents.

I really hope you are just trolling.

Oh, Henry - going back to the whole "you must be trolling" argumentation tactic.

Listen, midas hit the nail on the head:

You seem unable to answer these questions. You're just a guy who is FOS. And if I'm wrong, add knowlege to the world!

I challenge you Henry to answer the question below, company-by-company. For a guy who is very confident there will be tons of demand for RIM's patent portfolio you must know two things:

1) what RIM's patents are and
2) how they are important to each of the prospective bidders.

If you can't answer these questions off the top of your head, you're confirmed FOS.

I'm not the only one who feels this way and the alternative is that you are quite dense. If you were going to use the Nortel auction to price anything I'd at least expect you to use a per patent price -- that would still be bad but at least it would make some sense. You though just shot off some nonsense because two numbers happen to be the same by complete coincidence.

This is why you are clueless -- I don't need to know what the patents are for specifically to know how much they are worth. Patents are graded by firms who specialize in evaluating IP. Based on those grades and comparisons to other transactions you can get a good idea what a portfolio is worth.

No offense but you follow me from topic to topic and you know nothing and make a fool of yourself. I thought after you made yourself look like a retard in the Groupon topic you'd at least have the good sense to not try it in BFI. You are just an over-emotional angry dude and it is quite tiring.

JLF, nobody knows how much the patents are worth exactly.

I think it's even fair to say nobody knows what half of those patents really are, even if they are staring right at the patents.

What people know for sure is there is an arms race to have as many patents as possible, for good reason. Samsung's older model Galaxy Tab sales just got halted in the US. Next time, it might not be the older model.

One thing worth mentioning... AAPL seems more reluctant to sue RIMM than MSFT, Samsung and GOOG. That probably says something about the quality of RIMM's patents.

this .

al what is it about henry that makes you flame out every month or so .

This was becoming a halfway interesting discussion until the personal attacks started.

Translation: I have no idea what I'm talking about. Seriously, you can't take 5 minutes out of your time to answer a simple series of questions? Yet you write all that? Dude, you're just some random guy who has no job and enjoys (for whatever reason) opining on topics you know nothing about. Stop doing that, seriously man. I asked you a question, to advance my knoweldge - you can't answer it. Just come clean and say "yeah, I'm just FOS, I have no idea what the strategic priorities for patents are for Google, Amazon etc., and also no idea what is in the RIM patents." That's fine man!

Of course not - again, it's what someone will pay for them. And I never asked Henry to price these patents out.

There you go - this is actual industry information - and all I was asking about.

So let's take Google - they just spent $12.5 billion on Motorola Mobility, of which maybe $5 billion was the patent piece - and they are in the Nortel consortium of which they also spent a significant amount of monies.

I asked Henry, who claimed with confidence that Google would enter a bidding war for RIM's portfolio of patents if they became available... why Google would do so? A simple question. And he can't answer, which I assume because he knows nothing and is completely FOS on this topic. What else am I to think?

If you read the substance of my posts, it's clear I'm being logical, and Henry is evading answering simple questions because he has no value add on the topic. This isn't flaming out. If you want to point out where I'm being illogical in my posts above, I'd love to hear where. My questions are straightforward, and he can't answer them.

JLF, it's an arms race. MOT's patents don't seem to be enough to deter AAPL so far. RIMM might do the job.

Considering what's at stake, we're talking about chump change. GOOG does have 10 billion or so in cash to dump on RIMM, if for no other reason than to help Samsung defend against AAPL (which just got an injunction to halt the current flagship Android phone, the Galaxy Nexus)

I just need to pull out this quote on how lolbad it is - we were talking, as a reminder, about the specific value of RIM's patent portfolio. What is in it, and its utility to another company, is the central valuation metric. Not what some independent firm "grades" it as. Geezus, you really don't understand this basic point, do you?

The fact that you can't tell me why Google, or Apple, or MSFT etc. would actually desire to own the RIM patent portfolio means you have no sense of the value of RIM's patent portfolio.

This is exactly what Henry is premising his entire series of posts on. This seems way too reductive. I was looking to get a little deeper - these companies have many other strategic priorities, have already spent a lot on patents, and tons in legal fees for ongoing litigation.

How will RIM's patents help Samsung defend against AAPL? Seriously, go read the fosspatent site I linked above. There are a *ton* of worthless patents, and spending money on them is of course pointless.

BTW - do you now see how I am approaching the questions posed ITT?

You don't understand how patents are valued and despite having explained it to you twice you still fail to grasp it. The concept is actually not that different from securitization or really any pooling of unique but similar items. You lack the emotional control or the required knowledge to continue with this discussion. This topic is much better off without your participation and more than one person has gently suggested that to you.

JLF, you don't seem to understand we're way past the point of speculation. AAPL, MSFT, HTC, Nokia, GOOG, INTC, Samsung, and just about everyone in the tech sphere have put billions down on buying (or licensing) patents.

There is a ridiculous patent war going on and the stakes are only getting higher.

Will do. Got caught up at the beach then the casino. Sunday night.

Regarding the Nortel Patent purchase:

A group of companies (Apple, Microsoft, RIMM, Ericsson, Sony, EMC) had the winning bid of $4.5b for Nortels 6,000ish patents.

The sale was approved in July 2011.

From a quick glance, it looks like it hit RIMMs balance sheet FQ4 2012 (ended March 3, 2012).

Net Intangible Line FQ3 2012: $2,472m
Net Intangible Line FQ4 2012: $3,286m

Difference of: $814m

$779m was attributable to the Nortel patent bid.


The opening bid for this group of patents was supposedly $900m. If that is true, there is clear evidence of bidding war. Other rumored participants in the auction were Google and Intel...among others, I'm sure.


So we can assume ~ 23% of RIMMs current $3,372m value on their intangible assets line is attributable to the Nortel patent bid...which consists of 6,000ish patents.


Netting out the $779m valuation from RIMMs current intangible asset of $3,372m leaves us with $2,593m left to be accounted for and valuated.


I assume from the wording that RIMM has access to all of the patents and I'm also not sure if there was any deal with the winning group that might prohibit a member from selling their access to these patents to other companies. In other words, there might have been a contract/clause/agreement with the winning group that members aren't allowed to license/sell these patents to competing companies, Google for example. I don't know if this is the case (or how to find out what RIMMs options are regarding this group of patents) but I wouldn't be surprised to hear if something like this effected the possible sale of some of RIMMs patents.


Ultimately, these patents are only as valuable as what others are willing to pay. Timing is also important...what was once valuable a year ago might not be relevant today. Look at the PALM buyout. Several companies engaged in a bidding war for that floundering company to gain access to the webOS software and its patents...today, it'd likely not be purchased outright, rather picked apart. I think this is ultimately RIMMs fate given the competitive nature of the mobile industry.