Patent strategy specialist RPX Corporation says one of its subsidiary companies has bought approximately 4,000 patents from Rockstar Consortium.
Rockstar was formed three years ago to acquire around 6,000 technology patent assets from Nortel. The business is owned by Apple, Blackberry, Ericsson, Microsoft and Sony. Approximately 2,000 patents have subsequently been distributed to various Rockstar owners, leaving the remainder under the control of the consortium.
In 2013 the Rockstar group filed a legal complaint against Google and Android smartphone manufacturers Asustek, HTC, Huawei, LG, Pantech, Samsung and ZTE.
As a result of this new deal, the RPX Clearinghouse subsidiary will receive licence payments from a group of over 30 companies including Cisco and Google. RPX Clearinghouse says it’ll make the patents available to other interested companies under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licence terms.
John A Amster, Chief Executive and Co-founder of RPX, said “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.”
“This is the largest syndicate of its kind, and it proves once again that our clearinghouse approach can transform the patent licensing process from one dominated by prolonged litigation to one that is transparent, scalable, and provides a rational outcome for licensors and licensees alike.”