Apple Continues to Build their Nortel Patent Arsenal
Back on September tenth we posted a report revealing the fact that Apple had acquired 434 LTE centric patents. One of the original sources of our report stated that Rockstar Bidco, a company that Apple holds the majority stake in, acquired 116 LTE patents from Nortel, giving them a total of 434 LTE patents. It's now been revealed that Apple had been acquiring even more patents over the summer and the list is extensive.
In a report filed yesterday, Business Insider listed a link to the US Patent Office which linked to a series of patent assignments between Nortel, Rockstar Bidco and Apple. The list totaled up to 1375 patents originating from Nortel, with the vast majority of them being assigned to Apple. Some of the listed patents have yet to be assigned to Apple as shown here and here.
Although there are patents within this group which directly relate to LTE, many if not most don't, such as this one or one the one shown below that relates to three dimensional RF signatures. Yet in the bigger picture, all of the patents relate to modern communication technologies in one way or another.
An Example of a New Nortel Patent Assigned to Apple
While the Business Insider takes the position that "getting full rights to the patent likely helps Apple use the patents offensively in its ongoing lawsuits," I take the opposite position. I think that the newly acquired patents will likely be used defensively. Samsung banged the drum about suing Apple regarding LTE back in early September. If anything, Apple was sure to acquire the essential patents required to successfully defend any iOS device supporting LTE standards against any possible claim from Samsung.
In time we'll know who's position on this point ends up being correct.
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