Nortel Patent Sale Gets DoJ Review

gavron writes "The US Department of Justice will review the Nortel patent sale to the entity formed by Apple, Microsoft, and others. This is the same sale that the Canadian authorities declined to review because the $4B+ deal was valued by them at less than $328M. According to a (paywalled) Wall Street Journal report, 'The Justice Department wants to know whether [the consortium] intends to use them defensively to deter patent lawsuits against its members, or offensively against rivals.'"

Comments

Libertarians still here

[SuperKendall]

There are still libertarians here, they are just rarer and drowned out by the noisier people with ideals and no common sense or understanding of how humans work.

Re:So one intent is better than another?

[darkmeridian]

Unless you are Google, which is responsible for the Android operating system, which is hated by Apple. If you don't have defensive patents, you are going to get sued into oblivion. Hell, the ITC might even rule that your products cannot be shipped into the United States because of infringement. I mean, Apple currently has HTC over a barrel. Do you think that HTC shareholders wished they had a few defensive patents to use against the iPhone?

The law might suck, but businessmen have to play by the law.