Google Buying Nortel Patents?

Holy IP Batman! Google wants to pay $US900 million for Nortel's patent portfolio? Wow. I knew Nortel had some WiMAX intellectual property that was valuable, but i had no idea they'd see this kind of figure.

Turns out this proposed deal would cover some 6,000 patents and applications over a broad range of wired, wireless and digital communication technologies. So, this begs the question as to whether the sale of these patents - some of which are licenesed by Avaya - could impact our business. The answer is no, it doesn't.

Generally speaking, the way Nortel divied up patents through the bankruptcy is this: If patents were solely used by one business, they were divested with the sale of that business; but if patents were shared across businesses, Nortel retained them and licensed them out as appropriate to the multiple parties that needed them. For example, when Avaya acquired Nortel's Enterprise business, we also acquired more than 800 patents and applications specific to our busimess. We license the rest. But regardless of whether they are sold to Google - or another auction winner for that matter - our licenses remain intact. There's no real impact for us.

The bigger impact, frankly, has been what we've done with all that IP that came over with the NES deal. Last year was the biggest run in Avaya's history on technology and innovation launches. Want some examples? Check out web.alive here, Avaya Agile Communication Environment™ here, and Avaya Flare Experience™ here.