Nokia Sheds Patents, App Development Platform (NOK, VRNG, FB, GOOG, IACI, GCI, TGT, AOL MSFT, AAPL)

Investing

Published: August 9, 2012 10:04 am

Mobile phone maker Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) has agreed to sell a portfolio of more than 500 patents to Vringo Inc. (NYSEMKT: VRNG) for an undisclosed sum. Nokia will retain some ongoing rights to revenues generated from licensing the patents.

Vringo, once a ringtone maker closely tied to Facebook Inc.’s (NASDAQ: FB) social network, acquired intellectual property firm Innnovate/Protect in April and has been aggressively pursuing a patent infringement suit against Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), a division of IACInteractiveCorp. (NASDAQ: IACI), Gannett Co. Inc. (NYSE: GCI) and Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) for infringing two of the company’s patents. The company recently settled a licensing deal with AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL). The patents that Vringo acquired in the deal with Nokia are related to wireless communications standards.

Nokia also sold its Qt app development software to Finnish firm Digia for an undisclosed amount. Nokia paid $150 million for the development platform in 2008 but is unlikely to have received that much as a result of today’s sale. Nokia’s decision to adopt the Windows Phone platform from Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) eliminated the need for Qt, which apps developers can use to create an app once and translate the source code to run on other operating systems, including Google’s Android, iOS from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Symbian.

Nokia’s shares are up nearly 4% in the first half-hour of trading today at $2.78 in a 52-week range of $1.63 to $7.38.

Paul Ausick

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