A consortium of companies, including Apple and Microsoft has received legal approval for its purchase of a “war chest” of 6,000 patents from Nortel, in Chapter 11 since 2009.
Seems the one thing the two tech giants could agree on was their desire to outbid Google, which started the bidding war in the first place, by offering $900 million in cash for the patents. Experts say that having a solid list of patents to one’s name increasingly important for survival in the lawsuit-laden world of mobile communications.
But did Google really want the patents? Some observers were intrigued and amused by the search giant’s bids, which included such numbers as the distance between the earth and the sun, and Brun’s constant. And when the bidding got to $3 billion Google bid…pi.
“Either they were supremely confident or they were bored,” an anonymous observer told Reuters. Or maybe they simply decided that at $4.5 billion–three times the expected selling price–the patents just weren’t worth it.
