14 DAY TRIAL // Rumors about Google and Apple teaming up to buy Kodak's patents are flying once again. Bloomberg reports that the two adversaries are working together and have made $500 million bid for the patent portfolio of the now defunct company.
1,100 patents are up for grabs, so the sum may go higher than that. In fact, the banks selling the patents were hoping to get more, much more than this.
The bid hasn't been accepted yet. It's very likely that the very reason Google and Apple are working together is to keep the price low.
The two have been outbidding each other on a number of patent sales recently and all it does it cost one or the other billions of dollars spent for nothing else than to bulk on arsenal.
It's pointlessly spent money for patents that don't actually benefit either company.
Maybe Apple is realizing that the patent wars don't help anyone, some of Tim Cook's comments seem to be indicating that the company is looking to start focusing more on building great products rather than fighting in court.
Several other companies were in the running for the patents and had teamed up with either Apple or Google, initialy. It's likely that most of them are now behind this last bid.
Apple, along with Microsoft and RIM ended up paying some $4.5 billion for the Nortel patents last year, when Google lost the bid. Not long after that, Google decided to buy Motorola, in large part because of its big patent portfolio.
Tens of billions of dollars basically thrown out the window for patents that no one actually needs.
That said, companies teaming up to buy patent portfolios isn't unheard of, it's quite common in fact as it ensures that both spend less while also staying protected. So this may not be the start of a trend.