Nokia’s Merger with Alcatel-Lucent – IP Impact
Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent agreed to merge in mid-2015 and have been operating as a single company since January 2016 (called “Nokia Corporation”). The merger brings great strength to Nokia’s ability to compete in the mobile equipment space as a leader. Nokia now has access to technologies that can enable it to offer an expanded range of networking equipment and services in both wireless and wireline.
Nokia also holds many high quality patents in areas such as GSM, 3G and 4G LTE, many of which are standard-essential. Off-loading its devices division to Microsoft in 2013-2014 but holding on to its patents, significantly reduced Nokia’s cross-licensing pay-outs – which it did as a handset manufacturer. It also enabled Nokia to be far more aggressive on the licensing front, as shown by the number of big-ticket licensing deals it has done in the recent past. We can expect more of same in the coming months.
This report looks at Nokia’s patent portfolio and provides analytics and insights on some of its key facets. A portfolio taxonomy is provided which is used to study the publishing trends for various sub-categories within the portfolio. The taxonomy is also used to assess the IP impact of Nokia’s merger with Alcatel-Lucent. The findings of the report have been referenced in a post by the IAM Blog on March 30, 2018.
