This article is more than 1 year old

Rockstar swells Spherix patent portfolio with 100 new licenses

Network vendors: brief your lawyers

The voice and data industries could find themselves fielding a new bunch of sue-balls, with patent management outfit Rockstar putting more than 100 patents in the hands of Spherix.

Readers will remember that Rockstar was backed by Apple, BlackBerry, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, and Sony to scoop up a bunch of patents that came onto the market when Nortel collapsed. It's most famous tangle so far under its own name is with Google over Android patents, with Google asking for the lawsuit to be dismissed.

Announcing that 100 patents covering “access, switching, routing, optical and voice communications” technologies have been sold to Spherix, Rockstar has left no doubt about what it expects to happen next.

The technologies, Spherix says, “are found in technology used daily by consumers and businesses, as they cover the way traffic, video and voice are carried over public and private networks. As a company we can not stress enough the value of these assets and the opportunity it presents for all our shareholders and team.”

Spherix issued $US60 million of stock in the deal, and Rockstar will have the right to a cut from any future “recoveries” that Spherix gets from enforcing the patents.

Last year, the two companies announced their first patent deal, with Spherix getting seven mobile patents from Rockstar and launching actions against Vtec and Uniden, among others. ®

More about

More about

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like