BlackBerry Finalizes $600M Deal to Sell ‘Legacy’ Patents

BlackBerry signed a definitive agreement to sell its “legacy” patents to Catapult IP Innovations for $600 million, BlackBerry announced Monday. BlackBerry will receive back a license to the patents being sold, which mainly involve mobile devices, messaging, wireless networking and other businesses in which BlackBerry is no longer actively involved, it said: “Patents that are essential to BlackBerry’s current core business operations are excluded from the transaction.” Satisfying the regulatory conditions to complete the sale could take up to seven months, said BlackBerry. The process to sell the “noncore” portion of the patent portfolio took “much longer” than BlackBerry hoped, said CEO John Chen on a Dec. 21 earnings call (see 2112220013)