Nortel Completes Sale of Patents to Apple, Others

Nortel Networks Corp. on Friday announced completing the sale of its remaining patents and patent applicants to a consortium for $4.5 billion.

The members of the consortium included Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research in Motion and Sony.

The sale included more than 6,000 patents and patent applications spanning wireless, wireless 4G, data networking, optical, voice, Internet, service provider, semiconductors and other patents.

Google had been in the hunt for the patents, and in May, courts in Canada and the U.S. approved a stalking horse” asset sale agreement with a Google subsidiary, Ranger Inc., for a purchase price of $900 million. But following a multi-day auction, the consortium agreed to pay five times that amount for Nortels patent portfolio.

The once-great, Canada-based telecom equipment giant filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and has been selling itself off in pieces ever since.