[RockdaMan]

Financial Times:

Kasim Alfalahi, chief intellectual property officer at Ericsson, said: “The Nortel patent portfolio reflects the heritage of more than 100 years of its R&D activities and includes some essential patents in telecommunications and other industries. We believe the consortium is in the best position to utilise the patents in a manner that will be favourable to the industry long term.”

Analysts said the deal is a blow to Google, which bid $900m for the patent rights in April. The internet company needs better intellectual-property defences for its widely used Android smartphone software, as technology companies become increasingly litigious in their application of patent rights as a form of competition.

Google said in a blog post explaining its bid in April that the recent “explosion” in patent litigation “threatens to stifle innovation”
.
“Google is a relatively young company, and although we have a growing number of patents, many of our competitors have larger portfolios given their longer histories,” it wrote.

In a statement on Friday, Kent Walker, senior vice-president and general counsel at Google, said: “This outcome is disappointing for anyone who believes that open innovation benefits users and promotes creativity and competition. We will keep working to reduce the current flood of patent litigation that hurts both innovators and consumers.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/d5d19b16-a...#axzz1QraNuang