MONTREAL — Canadian technology licensing companies Wi-LAN Inc. and Mosaid Technologies are eyeing Nortel Network’s remaining patents, including those for advanced wireless for smartphones and other mobile devices.
Bankrupt Nortel owns thousands of technology patents which are in the process of being sold to help pay off its creditors.
“We’re looking at the whole portfolio,” Wi-LAN chief executive Jim Skippen said Tuesday.
“We have a high degree of interest in the 4G patents,” Skippen said of Nortel’s patents for fourth-generation wireless networks using a Internet-protocol technology called Long-Term Evolution, or LTE.
LTE, now just starting to go into service globally, is promising to give users speeds equivalent to their home Internet service when it comes to streaming video or surfing the Internet.
It is expected to become the dominant global standard for wireless networks carrying a lot of data traffic created by growing use of smartphones.
“But we are interested in other patents as well,” Skippen said Tuesday from Ottawa.
It has been estimated there are up to about 4,500 Nortel patents with a total estimated value of about $1 billion.
“We are soliciting a wide range of companies to determine their interest, but no decision has been made on the patents,” a Texas-based Nortel spokeswoman said recently.
Wi-LAN (TSX:WIN) would likely find a financial partner if it ends up purchasing some of Nortel’s patents and could create a separate “entity” to manage them, Skippen said.
Ottawa-based Mosaid Technologies Inc. (TSX:MSD) has also expressed interest in the LTE patents, as well as patents for optical telecommunications networks and lesser-known patents for Internet technologies and electronic commerce.
BlackBerry smartphone maker Research In Motion (TSX:RIM) could also be interested in the remaining patents, but hasn’t commented publicly.
Deloitte Canada technology analyst Duncan Stewart said the patents may not be worth $1 billion now.
“The addressable markets of these patents has been shrunk by the auction process,” said Stewart, director of research in technology, media and telecommunications.
“That is not to say the patents are worthless, just they are worth less than they were,” he said from Toronto.
Stewart estimated that between 10 and 20 companies worldwide may be interested in the remaining Nortel patents.
Technology analyst Nick Agostino said mobile phone makers Nokia and Motorola and networking equipment makers Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent could all be bidders.
Agostino said RIM could very well be interested in acquiring some of the patents.
Waterloo, Ont.-based RIM had wanted the federal government to prevent the US$1.1-billion sale of Nortel’s wireless assets to Ericsson of Sweden.
“They were beating the drum on this a year ago,” said Agostino, of Toronto-based Mackie Research Capital. “I think they were just setting the table for this stage.”
Nortel filed for court protection from creditors in the United States, Canada and other jurisdictions in January 2009, and has since sold most of its major operations to former rivals.
At its peak during the 1999-2000 technology boom, Nortel was Canada’s most valuable company after the telecom equipment maker went through several years of rapid expansion and diversification funded by debt and stock sales.
But starting in 2001 Nortel suffered a decline in sales, due to a combination of factors including the merger or demise of many of its customers, economic slowdowns and an accounting scandal.