Author: Yellow Warbler
Just now, on the occasion of the farewell of the Chinese Lunar Year of the Ox, the sale of the patent by BlackBerry finally came to fruition.
BlackBerry will sell non-core legacy patents to Catalyst IP Innovations Inc. for $600 million, including $450 million in cash and the remaining $150 million in promissory notes. The promissory note will be secured by a second lien of the buyer's assets, which will be paid in cash in equal installments of $30 million per year for five years from the third anniversary of the closing date, provided that the preferred loan is not in default.
Source: BlackBerry official website
Catapult IP Innovations Inc., registered in Delaware, USA, was a specially registered company for the acquisition, funded primarily by a $450 million senior secured term loan that had secured a $400 million conditional commitment from a lending institution led by Toronto's Third Eye Capital, which also included an unnamed Canadian pension fund.
BlackBerry said in a press release that the patents primarily relate to mobile devices, text messaging, and wireless networks. And the deal agreement contains license back clauses to guarantee that the deal will not affect its products and services.
BlackBerry said the deal would need to meet the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvement Act (also known as the HSR Act, Section 7A of the Clayton Antitrust Act) and Canada's Investment Canada Act, which could take 210 days to obtain all the necessary regulatory approvals.
BlackBerry has filed an updated report with the SEC on Form 8-K on signing a patent sales agreement, which includes further information, including a description of the financing conditions associated with the transaction.
Bloomberg, in reporting on the acquisition, recalled that BlackBerry and Apple, Microsoft and others spent $4.5 billion to acquire a portfolio of more than 6,000 patents when Nortel Network went bankrupt, and BlackBerry paid $770 million for it. It can also be seen from the amount of BlackBerry's capital contribution at that time that together with Apple and Microsoft, it preferentially acquired some of the high-quality patent assets of Nortel Network.
The reason why the Sale of a BlackBerry patent has attracted a lot of attention has a lot to do with the quality of the patents it holds. If its patents are dispersed into the market, especially if they are acquired by some NPEs, it will bring unstable litigation risks to the entire market.
With the decline of the mobile phone business, BlackBerry's operations have not been as good as before in recent years, but the market performance in the automotive operating system is good, and its patents are constantly scattered on the market.
When BlackBerry sold about 100 patents to Huawei at the end of 2020, it triggered national security concerns among some people in Canada.
In the second half of last year, Honor also bought some patents that originally belonged to BlackBerry. Among the patent pools managed by marconi Group, the parent company of Avanci, which is already known as automotive patent pool, is a Teletry project, which focuses on the licensing of BlackBerry patented products, and is also considered one of the most valuable products in the wireless communications industry.
With the transfer of blackBerry's non-core patents to the new company, how to operate in the future will become the focus of market attention.
The last big deal in the year of the bull in the patent licensing market also seems to indicate that in the year of the tiger, the patent trading market may usher in more surprises.
Good luck in the Year of the Tiger!