Unwired Planet, Inc. (NASDAQ:UPIP) and Lenovo (HKSE: 992) recently announced that Lenovo has agreed to purchase a portfolio of patents from Unwired Planet and to take a term-based license to Unwired Planet’s patent portfolio. The aggregate consideration for the combined transaction is $100 million payable in cash. The transaction is expected to close by the middle of April.
Under the terms of the agreement, Lenovo is now licensed under Unwired Planet’s intellectual property portfolio, which covers standard essential, implementation, and application layer technology for mobile devices. Following the transaction, Unwired Planet’s portfolio will consist of approximately 2,500 issued and pending US and foreign patents. The patent purchase consists of 21 patent families owned by Unwired Planet, including patents for 3G and LTE mobile technologies and other important mobility patents.
“We are pleased to have reached an agreement with one of the world’s leading global technology companies,” said Philip Vachon, Chairman of Unwired Planet’s Board of Directors and head of its Intellectual Property Committee. “We wish Lenovo continued success going forward.”
“This investment is an extension of Lenovo’s existing intellectual property portfolio,” said Jay Clemens, General Counsel of Lenovo. “It will serve the company well as we grow and develop our worldwide smartphone and mobile PC Plus business in new markets.”
Readers will recall that in January 2014, Lenovo also purchased Motorola Mobility from Google for $2.9 billion. Also in January 2014, Lenovo picked up IBM’s low-margin server business for $2.3 billion. While the Unwired Planet purchase is very small in comparison to these other recent deals with Google and IBM, it does confirm what Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing has said in recent weeks, which is that acquisitions will continue.
Tags: Lenovo, Motorola Mobility, patent, patent portfolio, patent portfolio transactions, Patent portfolios, patents, Unwired Planet, Yang Yuanqing
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