Nortel’s LTE Patents a “National Treasure”

By Mark Evans | Published: August 7, 2009

You’ve got to hand it to Research in Motion; it’s making an impassioned and nationalistic pitch for Nortel’s LTE patents.

At an emergency parliamentary hearing this morning looking into Nortel’s plan to sell its CDMA wireless business LTE R&D business to Ericsson for $1.13-billion, RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said Nortel’s LTE patent portfolio and development work is,”nothing short of a national treasure that Canada must not lose.”

He also provided details on negotiations held between RIM and Nortel, and the fact that RIM thought it had a deal for Nortel’s LTE assets.

As I have argued before, RIM’s master strategy is getting hold of the LTE patents. The last-minute bid for the CDMA and LTE R&D unit, and Lazaridis’ appearance in Ottawa today are all part of a plan to gain Ottawa’s support for a future bid for the LTE patents.

For more details on today’s hearing, check out Unstrung.


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  • protosphere

    the above link to unstrung didn't work for me, I found it here:

    http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=180246

  • john2009

    RIM's bid were really killing one for CDMA division. Luckly Nortel not made any deal with them.If RIM purchased only LTE Dev and LTE patents then who will buy the phasinng out cdma division.Its really an unfail deal requested by RIM only based on thier business interest not on canada security or saving jobs

  • less

    …, while the current BoD care about nothing but themselves.

  • Teleguy

    At least RIM sent the sane owner this time round. If RIM wants the patents they will have to be the highest bidder at a likely patent auction after the business units have been sold. What is RIM hoping for here? They low-ball a bid and when a foreign buyer wins, they cry to the Gov't to intervene and award them the patents based on some sort of patriotic BS?? Great business strategy there guys.

  • NTInfidel

    Yep. I think RIM is trying to make the case that LTE patent bidding (what it really wants) be restricted to Canadian companies (whatever those are in this multinational world).

    Basically, a lot of theater so the can get what they want with less bidding competition and thus a lower price.

    RIM certainly never wanted CDMA.

  • TongueInCheek

    It's become very clear that the legal requirements of bankruptcy caused an interruption to RIM's LTE Patent acquisition strategy. Perhaps they should have taken their case to the Creditor Committee, Bondholder Committee and the Monitor to show how their purchase would have been of greater benefit under law over a court sanctioned auction.

    I have problem with RIM acquiring LTE Patents. Also sounds like they don't like the License Agreements in place so that they couldn't hoard the patents and potentially block others, such as Apple, from getting equal access to the patents.

  • RoadKing10453

    I find everything I've read about and from RIM over the last several weeks to be extremely disingenuous. Lots of peers were worried over various firms getting us (Nokia vs E// vs MP vs etc etc etc) but RIM has been doing all this showboating for the sake of the press/public. Go away already. Go hook the NHL eh…leave us alone.

  • tryn2makealivin
  • tryn2makealivin
  • ntpurgatory
  • protosphere

    that's not quite true, they had a deal in motion, the deal breaker was bankruptcy where Nortel changed the rules after RIM already signed NDA's. If anyone was “extremely disingenuous”, it was Nortel in my opinion.

  • less

    The president and co-CEO of BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion said he had a handshake deal with Nortel to buy part of its wireless business before the deal was suddenly called off.

    The companies were even emailing about the wording of a press release announcing the deal, Mike Lazaridis told a emergency parliamentary committee on Friday.

    “We felt like we were snookered,” Lazaridis said.

  • propertyauctionsonline

    Hey, love the blog – i will try and keep up with it!! please keep more coming

  • freqmgr

    This National Treasure involves only those LTE patents developed in Canada, right? None of them were developed in Richardson or other wireless R&D centers? Does anyone think that original thought was limited to Nortel Canada R&D staff? Or that they passed their ideas to Ottawa colleagues to be filed? Actually in 2008 Nortel in general was having difficulty paying both for patent filings and the related bonus to R&D staff. Lack of funds…lack of future vision…lack of business development drive.

  • alexglee

    I'm wondering Nortel's LTE patetns are valuable enough to be called a “National Treasure”.

    Recently, TechIPm, LLC analyzed the Nortel's LTE patents:
    Innovation Frontline in blogspot, titled ” Nortel's LTE IPR Analysis: Essential Patent Candidates for OFDM/MIMO Standards”

    To evaluate the quality of Nortel's LTE IPR for OFDM/MIMO standards, patent discloses for each essential patent candidate are compared to the technical specifications for LTE OFDM/MIMO standards (TS36.211 V8.70). Total of 28 patents issued and published in the United States before Aug. 1 2009 in the lists of patents declared essential to LTE appear at the ETSI IPR Online are used in the analysis.

    As for the most described field of technical specification, Down Link OFDM/MIMO (Section 6.3) was the top in Nortel's OFDM/MIMO essential patent candidates.

    As a measure for the essentiality of the candidates, Essentiality Index (EI) is evaluated:

    EI : Criteria
    E0 : Patent discloser is nothing to do with LTE technical specifications
    E1 : Patent discloser is weakley related to LTE technical specifications
    E2 : Patent discloser is partially related to LTE technical specifications, but required further analysis
    E3 : Patent discloser is partially related to LTE technical specifications
    E4 : Patent discloser is related to LTE technical specifications overall
    E5 : Patent discloser is strongly related to LTE technical specifications

    More than half of the Nortel's OFDM/MIMO essential patent candidates are classified as E2.

    Only 30 % (seven E3 and one E4) of the Nortel's OFDM/MIMO essential patent candidates are classified as high value of EI for the essentiality.

  • alexglee

    I'm wondering Nortel's LTE patetns are valuable enough to be called a “National Treasure”.

    Recently, TechIPm, LLC analyzed the Nortel's LTE patents:
    Innovation Frontline in blogspot, titled ” Nortel's LTE IPR Analysis: Essential Patent Candidates for OFDM/MIMO Standards”

    To evaluate the quality of Nortel's LTE IPR for OFDM/MIMO standards, patent discloses for each essential patent candidate are compared to the technical specifications for LTE OFDM/MIMO standards (TS36.211 V8.70). Total of 28 patents issued and published in the United States before Aug. 1 2009 in the lists of patents declared essential to LTE appear at the ETSI IPR Online are used in the analysis.

    As for the most described field of technical specification, Down Link OFDM/MIMO (Section 6.3) was the top in Nortel's OFDM/MIMO essential patent candidates.

    As a measure for the essentiality of the candidates, Essentiality Index (EI) is evaluated:

    EI : Criteria
    E0 : Patent discloser is nothing to do with LTE technical specifications
    E1 : Patent discloser is weakley related to LTE technical specifications
    E2 : Patent discloser is partially related to LTE technical specifications, but required further analysis
    E3 : Patent discloser is partially related to LTE technical specifications
    E4 : Patent discloser is related to LTE technical specifications overall
    E5 : Patent discloser is strongly related to LTE technical specifications

    More than half of the Nortel's OFDM/MIMO essential patent candidates are classified as E2.

    Only 30 % (seven E3 and one E4) of the Nortel's OFDM/MIMO essential patent candidates are classified as high value of EI for the essentiality.

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