The U.S. Justice Department is looking into how the consortium of technology companies that recently purchased $4.5 billion worth of telecom patents from bankrupt Nortel (News 
- Alert) Networks plan to use their newly acquired intellectual property, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Federal authorities are interviewing members of the consortium – headlined by companies like Apple, Microsoft (News - Alert) and RIM – to see if they will use the wireless patents to launch infringement lawsuits against their competitors in the mobile space, particularly Android (News - Alert)-maker Google.
The consortium's final offer dwarfed Google's $900 million stalking horse bid, causing some to raise their eyebrows over how the companies planned on using the treasure chest of patents. The deal was approved earlier this month and finalized on Friday, but the Justice Department still retains the right to impose restrictions on how the patents can be used.
If the department deems that the consortium, dubbed Rockstar Bidco, is planning on using the intellectual property simply to take its competitors to court, the JD could take action.
They will need to investigate “whether there's an agreement, implicit or explicit, among the members of the Rockstar consortium to collectively hinder the adoption of Android,” Thomas Ensign, an antitrust lawyer at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP, told the news source.
As a relatively new company, Google's (News - Alert) patent portfolio is somewhat scarce, leaving it vulnerable to litigation from dozens of legacy patent holders and technology providers.
Android licensees like HTC, Motorola and Samsung (News - Alert) have faced numerous patent infringement lawsuits in recent years from companies like Apple and Microsoft. Armed with even more patents, the consortium could keep Google in court, rather than in the lab developing new mobile technologies.
Not one to sit back and wait, Google has already responded to its Nortel hiccup by acquiring more than 1,000 patents from IBM. The search engine giant is also said to be in preliminary acquisition talks with wireless chip technology company Interdigital, which owns around 8,800 patents.
The Nortel and IBM deals highlight the absurdity of a global patent war that could absolutely inhibit innovation, and may unfortunately necessitate government intervention at some point in the near future.
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Beecher Tuttle is a TMCnet contributor. He has extensive experience writing and editing for print publications and online news websites. He has specialized in a variety of industries, including health care technology, politics and education. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Jennifer Russell
