Until a few years ago, BlackBerry was considered one of the great dominators of the smartphone market. In addition to its well-known hardware, the Canadian brand also had a complete ecosystem, with excellent services for users. This whole empire collapsed in a few years, with the disappearance of BlackBerry from the market. Now, to put an end to its existence, it has sold one of its best assets. We are talking about patents associated with the mobile world.
More than just an excellent line of smartphones, BlackBerry has always invested heavily in new technologies. It has pioneered many innovations in the smartphone market, from hardware to software and the services it offered. Of course, it has always protected its intellectual property and its range of patents is wide, controlling much of what its competitors used. All these assets will now leave the hands of the Canadian company and pass to Catapult IP Innovations Inc.
The best patents will be sold
The sale is complete and will bring in a lot of money for BlackBerry. In total, $600 million will be paid, but not all at once. An initial amount of 4500 million will be advanced, leaving 150 million to be paid after 3 years.
Catapult IP Innovations Inc is actually a new company that was created with the purpose of buying BlackBerry’s patents. This is a clear move to initiate a large control and it will bring work to the courts, with processes for those who use these technologies.
They were the best assets of the mobile market
It will be a company that will only have these patents as assets, having no source of profit. Thus, the most certain thing is that you will have to put patents as a means of capitalization and for this you will have to license the technology or demand payments from whoever uses it.
With this sale, BlackBerry closes its participation in the mobile market once and for all, after all the success. The brand will also get rid of patents such as its physical keyboard, the messaging service and many others. According to what they revealed, this will have no impact on current users.