That looks pretty bad. Seems pretty obvious this is going to cost Apple & Google some serious money, even if it's just hiring more lawyers for the lawsuits from "Catapult IP Innovations".
I expect that Apple and Google were already licensing any blackberry patents they needed/would be forced to use.
This is big enough that Apple and Google’s operational risk group would have done a calculation to buy if the exposure was less than the sale price.
The patent trolling is likely for smaller companies who can’t afford to fight the troll.
Since they were bought up by a nonpracticing entity, (a) doesn't apply. There's no way they'll recoup their $600M investment by going after companies that sell low volume, low margin devices.
By the time the Linux phone people have war chests to raid, theses patents will be expired. Rest assured they're targeting some subset of FAANG. The article mentions a patent on charging batteries.
Facebook and Amazon sell stuff with batteries in them. Perhaps the trolls think they can extract a few hundred million from Oculus and Fire tablets. Come to think of it, Tesla probably has some cash laying around, and I think their cars can move and also contain batteries. Why should they be allowed to freeload?
Similarly, ICE cars use lead acid batteries, don't they?
This patent could be a gold mine, and we owe it all to RIM for inventing the rechargeable battery in the mid 1990's!
I wonder when the current patent on charging rechargeable batteries expires. I wonder who the PTO will issue the next iteration to, and if they're publicly held...
Patent trolls sometimes sue people without money in order to get precedents that can be used against people with money.
BlackBerry has been licensing these patents for years; all of the usual suspects have already either agreed to terms or been sued by this point.
On top of that, they can always leverage the IP against smaller existing players or new entrants and use it to bump up rates for the rest of their portfolio.
I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if BlackBerry had more lawyers than engineers at this point.
There are many non-practicing entities that don't abuse their patents. ARM is an example.
I'd argue ARM isn't really an NPE. They actually sell useful designs that are actually implemented right? It's customers are paying for a design, architecture and software--not the freedom from being sued.
Being a new company with no history is, likely, strategic. Patent wars between practicing entities tend to be multi-front. Each side brings its own war chest of patents claims. Settlements tend to be more of a cease fire than a permanent end. They agree to stop suing each other.
Being non practicing means that a patent war can't interfere with your more important interests. Being clean slate means that whoever you sue can't return fire by going after the rest of your patent portfolio.
"Patent trolling" isn't black or white definitionally, but it has earned its bad name. It's an ugly game of dirty tricks.
Of course it could just be financial engineering, though I suspect that would look more like an asset backed loan.
All we ever see is “threat of litigation by troll” “company takes stand against troll”
But we have no clue how the negotiations went? We have no clue how many are agreed upon, we have no clue how many are tolerable small revenue splits or something else
All we are left with are extreme positions that imagine every patent or litigant is an extortion racket and thats just negligent
There is room for nuance by adults
In my failed attempt to retort with a witty pun on Ballistas, I ended up spending close to half an hour exploring a rather deep rabbit hole on the evolution of medieval siege weapons.
Abolish the patent system and let human innovation leap forward.
Maybe the freshly formed company is owned by some former RIM exec(s)...