Early Christmas gift or hell freezing over (again)? Rockstar Consortium (not to be confused with Rockstar, the game developers) and patent clearinghouse RPX have announced an agreement that would transfer ownership of 4,000 patents that the consortium owns over to RPX. And as part of that agreement, Rockstar has agreed to drop all ongoing patent lawsuits against the likes of Samsung, LG, and HTC. Sadly for Google and Cisco, this announcement comes after they’ve agreed to settle a similar patent squabble with Rockstar last month.
Rockstar, a consortium whose members include Microsoft, Apple, Sony, and Ericsson to name a few, outbid Google for 6,000 patents previously held by the now defunct Nortel Networks to the tune of $4.5 billion. The consortium planned on recouping that cost by licensing the patents, but things didn’t go as planned for them. In the end, they resorted to lawsuits involving Google, Cisco, and many Android-related companies and manufacturers. Last November, Google caved in and agreed to settle the matter, though details of that remain undisclosed.
Perhaps Rockstar is just cutting its losses or it received quite a sum from that settlement. Whatever the reason, it has surprisingly chosen to sell the 4,000 patents it holds in common to a patent clearinghouse, effectively ending any lawsuit related to those patents. RPX will license these patents to a syndicate made up of more than 30 companies, which also includes Google and Cisco. These companies, however, only receive a non-exclusive license, so they can’t really use those to sue others. The purpose of the setup is to protect these licensees from patent litigation. RPX itself doesn’t use the patents it hold for litigation, but that’s only as a matter of policy.
While that might sound great and all, it’s not completely without caveat. Of the 6,000 patents that Rockstar Consortium acquired from Nortel, it will only be the 4,000 that it holds in common that will be sold off to RPX. The other 2,000 have been distributed already among its members but it is those 2,000 that have been deemed to be the most valuable. In short, they could still very well be used in future patent suits, though some of the companies have separately announced ceasefires of their own.
SOURCE: RPX, Wall Street Journal
