Viewpoint: Don't believe the patent sale hype

Mike McLean and Art Monk, UBM TechInsights
EETimes (8/12/2011 1:42 PM EDT)

The $4.5 billion Nortel patent sale has lead to a flurry of commentary about a bubble in patent valuation and the impact patents have on innovation and job creation. Much of this commentary has identified the Nortel transaction as part of a new trend of patent activity with companies starting to monetize their patent assets. If this is a new trend, it is one that has repeated itself whenever an existing market is disrupted by new entrants. In the 1980’s, Japanese companies began to dominate the DRAM industry and were met with patent enforcement efforts from Texas Instruments, IBM, Motorola, and other established DRAM providers. This then played out across the rest of the semiconductor industry with a cycle of patent skirmishes and acquisition thrusts leading to an arrangement of broad cross-licenses.

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