Nortel Spinoff, IBM Sign Patent-Licensing Agreement

Nortel spinoff Blade Network Technologies now has access to 40,000 patents from computer giant IBM. It’s a cross-license deal that Blade hopes will make it a stronger competitor to Cisco.

Analysts see this as an important move for BNT’s future, as many of the patents involved in the agreement relate to virtualization and cloud computing.

BNT, which manufactures 10-gigabit Ethernet switches, ranks third in the number of ports shipped, only behind Cisco and ProCurve. The company spun off from Nortel in 2006.

The news comes the same week we learned that another Nortel spinoff, Entrust, is doing quite well by selling itself for more than $100 million.