A couple of weeks ago Microsoft agreed to acquire around 925 patents and associated patent applications from AOL in a deal worth just over one billion dollars (£664 million).
Microsoft has now agreed to let Facebook buy a portion of that patent portfolio for $550 million. Facebook will end up owning approximately 650 AOL patents and patent applications. It’ll also have a license to the remaining AOL patents and applications owned by Microsoft, while Microsoft will have a license to the AOL patents and applications owned by Facebook.
Brad Smith, executive vice president and general counsel at Microsoft, said “Today’s agreement with Facebook enables us to recoup over half of our costs while achieving our goals from the AOL auction. As we said earlier this month, we had submitted the winning AOL bid in order to obtain a durable license to the full AOL portfolio and ownership of certain patents that complement our existing portfolio.”