It has been revealed this week that Microsoft has sold a majority of its AOL patent portfolio to Facebook for $550 Million. The deal included 650 patents in total, but in its initial AOL Auction Microsoft secured around 925 U.S. patents and patent applications plus a license to AOL’s remaining patent portfolio.
The remaining patents in AOL’s portfolio, contains around 300 additional patents that were not for sale. As a result of today’s agreement, Facebook will obtain ownership of approximately 650 AOL patents and patent applications, plus a license to the AOL patents and applications that Microsoft will purchase and own. Brad Smith, executive vice president and general counsel, Microsoft explains:
“Today’s agreement with Facebook enables us to recoup over half of our costs while achieving our goals from the AOL auction,”-“As we said earlier this month, we had submitted the winning AOL bid in order to obtain a durable license to the full AOL portfolio and ownership of certain patents that complement our existing portfolio.”
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