Late last night, it was revealed that Nortel had picked a winner for their patent portfolio. To the surprise of many, that winner was not Google, which had put up the initial "stalking horse" bid to get the ball rolling. Instead, the winner was a "consortium" of industry players ? a consortium that includes Apple, RIM, Microsoft, Sony, and others. In other words, this sounds to us like the absolute worst possible scenario for Google. It's not just that one of their major rivals won the rights to the over 6,000 patents. It's that all of them did. Unsurprisingly, Google is not happy. "This outcome is disappointing for anyone who believes that open innovation benefits users and promotes creativity and competition. We will keep working to reduce the current flood of patent litigation that hurts both innovators and consumers," Kent Walker, Google's Senior Vice President and General Counsel said in a statement that Google sent out to members of the press.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/vmJv9fsSC28/
