The transaction will be completed in the third quarter and will help on the mobile front

Jun 19, 2012 06:55 GMT  ·  By

Having just announced an achievement on the high-performance computing market, and the Xeon Phi brand, Intel is proving that it has been just as active on other fields.

Intel makes various products, but its mobile processors could use some work, so the company decided it was time to acquire the rights to some more technologies that could improve and enhance them.

To go straight to the point, the Santa Clara, California-based company has reached an agreement with Interdigital.

Interdigital makes and develops patents related, for the most part, to LTA, 3G and 802.11 wireless technologies.

LTE (Long Term Evolution) and LTE-Advanced 4G technologies, WCDMA (Wideband CDMA), HSDPA (High Speed Download Packet Access) and HSUPA (High Speed Upload Packet Access), Interdigital has dabbled in all these things.

Through the new agreement, Intel is buying around 1,700 patents and patent applications. In exchange, Interdigital will receive $375 million / 297 million Euro.

"These patents will support Intel's strategic investments in the mobile segment," said Doug Melamed, Intel senior vice president and general counsel.

"The addition of these patents expands our already large, strong and diverse portfolio of intellectual property."

Intel and Interdigital will complete the transaction at some point during the third quarter of 2012 (the July-September period). The Clovertrail CPU, or its successors, will benefit from the extra IP.

"The acquisition of this portfolio of InterDigital's technologies by a global technology leader like Intel affirms the efforts of our research and development team which actively shares our innovations with the worldwide standards bodies, defining technologies that are central to the world's major wireless systems and devices," said Scott McQuilkin, senior executive vice president, strategy and finance at InterDigital.

"This transaction, which involves a small portion of our overall patent portfolio, marks an important milestone of InterDigital's stated strategy of expanding the monetization of its large and growing intellectual property portfolio."