Having just spent US$2.91 billion to buy Motorola from Google in January, Lenovo opened the purse strings again this week to acquire a number of Unwired Planet mobile patents. In all, it bought 21 patent families covering 3G, LTE and “other important” mobile technologies from Unwired Planet, a company that bills itself as the “the inventor of the Mobile Internet.” The deal is worth US$100 million.
“This investment is an extension of Lenovo’s existing intellectual property portfolio,” said Jay Clemens, General Counsel of Lenovo. “It will serve the company well as we grow and develop our worldwide smartphone and mobile PC Plus business in new markets.”
As part of the agreement, Lenovo is also licensed to Unwired Planet’s intellectual property portfolio for a number of years, covering standard essential, implementation, and application layer technology for mobile devices. For its part, Unwired Planet will still have some 2,500 issued and pending U.S. and foreign patents.
The Unwired Planet mobile patents transaction is expected to close in 30 days.
Patents have become a valuable tool by which companies can protect themselves against litigation by competitors and patent trolls. When Google sold Motorola to Lenovo, it held on to the patents it acquired. They can also be quite profitable. Microsoft which holds a number of patents in the mobile space is making billions from its Android licensing agreements.
Source : Lenovo