A consortium that included Apple won an auction for a collection of Nortel patents earlier this month with a bid of $4.5 billion. According to the company’s 10-Q quarterly report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Apple’s contribution was a hefty $2.6 billion.
In addition to Apple, the consortium included a number of smartphone giants such as Ericsson, Microsoft, Research in Motion, and Sony. The combination managed to prevent Google from getting their hands on over 6,000 patents, some of which are said to be essential to the deployment of the next-generation of wireless technology, LTE (4G).
Apple’s $2.6 billion represents 58% of the entire purchase price of the portfolio, which strengthens rumors that the iPhone maker paid $2 billion for “outright ownership” of those valuable LTE patents.
Apple’s spending isn’t likely to stop there, however. The company is said to be considering another battle against Google for a collection of 1,300 patents related to mobile technologies currently owned by InterDigital, which are “deeper and stronger” than those previously owned by Nortel, according to the company’s CEO.
[via MacRumors]
