Nokia sells 350 wireless patents to Sisvel

Nokia (NYSE:NOK) sold 350 patents related to wireless technologies to Sisvel International, an Italian patent licensing company.

The companies did not disclose financial terms of the deal, which also involved the sale of 100 patents related to video encoding optimization technologies. The wireless patents have been declared essential to standards by Nokia, and cover GSM, UMTS, WCDMA and LTE network technologies. The patents are likely to be especially useful to Sisvel, which is trying to build an LTE patent pool. Nokia will retain the right to license the patents and the patents remain subject to the terms of prior agreements.

Overall, the patents represent just a fraction of the 30,000 patents and patent applications that Nokia holds. The strength of Nokia's patent portfolio was on display earlier this year when the company emerged the victor against Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) in the companies' long-running patent dispute. Apple agreed to pay Nokia a one-time payment as well as ongoing royalties for the length of the deal.

Nokia is not the only wireless company making waves in the patent game. Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC), which participated in a consortium earlier this year to buy Nortel Networks' patent portfolio for $4.5 billion, has said it wants monetize its own trove of more than 27,000 patents. To that end, Ericsson announced this week that its Chief Intellectual Property Officer Kasim Alfalahi will report directly to CEO Hans Vestberg.

For more:
- see this release
- see this IDG News Service article

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