A consortium comprising Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research In Motion and Sony has been confirmed as the winning bidder of Nortel’s patent portfolio, paying US$4.5 billion in cash. The sale includes more than 6,000 patents and patent applications spanning wireless, wireless 4G, data networking, optical, voice, internet, service provider, semiconductors and other patents, the bankrupt Canadian vendor said in a statement. “The size and dollar value for this transaction is unprecedented, as was the significant interest in the portfolio among major companies around the world,” said George Riedel, Nortel’s Chief Strategy Officer. Nortel expects the transaction to close in Q3, subject to regulatory approvals. In separate statements, RIM said it had contributed US$770 million and Ericsson US$340 million to the total US$4.5 billion. Other contributions have not been disclosed.   

Among the notable absent names from the winning consortium is Google, which had previously been named as “stalking horse” in the process, having pledged to pay US$900 million. Google explicitly said that its interest in the portfolio was to help it defend patent actions. The Guardian reports that Google’s failure to land the Nortel patents may therefore mean that Apple and Microsoft have the upper hand in any forthcoming patent rows. Microsoft is already extracting payments from a number of companies that use Google’s Android OS on the basis that it owns patents that they were infringing. Oracle is also suing Google, alleging that Android infringes a number of its Java patents.