Fresh from its purchase of the Nortel patent cache, Apple is in the hunt to purchase mobile technology owned by InterDigital. Cupertino “frenemies” Google and Samsung are also bidding, hoping Apple won’t lay claim to another piece of technology that Android is dependent upon.
InterDigital is putting itself up for sale, including around 8,800 mobile phone patents used by the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry handsets, according to insiders. Samsung is interested in blunting Apple’s already threatening patent collection of Android technology.
“The fight between Apple and Samsung is getting serious, so if the assets go to Apple, it could be pretty risky for Samsung,” A Korean analyst tells Bloomberg. Apple has charged in court that Samsung’s Galaxy products “slavishly” copied the iPhone and iPad.
Google lost the chance to buy Nortel’s patent trove, which Apple and Microsoft bought for $4.5 billion. InterDigital’s CEO described his company’s patent collection as “deeper and stronger” than Nortel’s.
The InterDigital patent portfolio is valued at $5 billion or more, according to reports.
We saw this coming a couple of years ago but we’re now in the thick of it: a no-holds-barred patent war in the mobile space, as companies desperately maneuver to protect themselves from litigation while simultaneously squeezing every last drop of royalty money out of their competitors. By the end of the day, we could very well see Apple making more off of the competition than the competition does.
