Apple-Google Team Up For $500 Million-Plus Kodak Patents Bid

Mentioning Google and Apple on the news means rivalry, competition or a certain conflict; but to mean teaming up that is a first! Yes after one of the parties has sensed the bitter taste of defeat in the Nortel Auction teaming up sounded to be the most reasonable solution in that matter. Yes, after a long history of rivalry, Apple Inc. and Google Inc. teamed up to bid more than $500 million to buy Eastman Kodak Co. patents out of bankruptcy, stated Bloomberg News on Friday, based on people who asked to stay anonymous.

Throughout the Nortel Auction, a group teaming Microsoft Corp., Apple and Research in Motion Ltd. bought Nortel Networks Corp.’s patents for $4.5 billion out of bankruptcy last year. Google has lost the auction for those patents after making an initial offer of $900 million.  This time, Google decided to join Apple in order to escape any further bidding loss after they had both created separate teams to try to get some of Kodak patents.

What lead those two companies to lineup when they could have fought over the patents as they have always done? What incentives did they both have to meet after a long history of business conflict? In order to obey bankruptcy terms, Kodak announced that she would be discharging 1,100 patents of digital imaging sort. Both, Apple and Google were interested in those patents since they represent a technology where they would both want to be successful. Apple and Google knew for sure that those patents will be sold for a very high price that is why they decided to team up to collect a high amount, higher than $500 million dollars, enough to win those patents.

However, spokesmen of all mentioned companies strictly refused to make any official statement. Similarly to every underground discussions, private negotiations or secret lineups, the representatives of these three companies refused to give any legitimate declaration or official statement about any of the news posted on Friday. When asked, Kodak’s spokesman didn’t want to reveal any information not even a small hint related to what’s going on behind the scenes and remained silent about all the declarations and leaks that have been broadcasted. The followers and the people interested in technology and business will have to stay focused on the news if they are willing to be the first to know what this teaming and bidding might produce.

Author Bio:

This post is written by Mark Jenkins and he works at Coupon Audit as a writer, where thousands of valid and working online coupons for different stores are available including but not limited to diapers.com coupons and various other online stores.