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Yahoo Preps Auction For 3,000 Patents Worth $1 Billion (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Wall Street Journal reports that bids are being accepted for nearly 3,000 Yahoo patents and pending applications. In April, Yahoo moved 2,659 patents into a patent-holding company called Excalibur IP LLC, which was seen as a first step toward a patent sale. "This represents a unique opportunity for companies operating in the Internet industry to acquire some of the most pioneering and foundational patents related to Web search and advertising," Yahoo said in a statement. Those invited to join the auction include "strategic buyers, private-equity firms, and investment firms focused on intellectual property," according to the Journal. Preliminary bids are due by the middle of this month, and the patents are expected to fetch more than $1 billion, according to "people familiar with the matter" who spoke to the Journal. Bloomberg, which also reported on the patent sale, said there was no official reserve price or bidding guidelines. Yesterday, Verizon submitted a $3 billion bid for Yahoo's core internet business. The sale will include 500 U.S. patents and more than 600 pending applications, but will not include the larger collection of patents going in the patent sale.
Marissa Mayer is widely expected to stand down as CEO with any takeover deal and will leave with a severance package of around $110m.
Run a business into the ground and make $100 million? What a great scam.
Just remember Eastman-Kodak. Their patent portfolio was supposedly worth somewhere around $2B. They tried to sell it as a last ditch to save the company but their competitors joined up and kept the price down. They ended up getting only a tiny fraction of what they thought it was valued at and now there is effectively no more Eastman-Kodak. Granted, Yahoo isn't in nearly the predicament that Eastman-Kodak was, but it still may not be as lucrative as they think.