This is the last chapter in the long descent into hell of the BlackBerry company, ex-star of the telephony market which has never been able to bounce back after the appearance of smartphones. The Canadian brand announces that it has concluded the sale of its patent portfolio for an amount of $600 million.
The buyer is called Catapult IP Innovations Inc., a company specially created to acquire these intellectual properties relating to the fields of mobility, messaging and wireless networks. It includes, among other things, patented technologies historically used by BlackBerry phones such as their keyboards, as well as their flagship functions such as BlackBerry Messenger messaging. These patents had notably been used by RIM (the former name of BlackBerry) in numerous legal battles, the last dating back to 2018 against Facebook Messenger.
This is also the avowed objective of Catapult IP Innovations Inc., whose lawyers will seek to “monetize” the patents acquired by bringing possible lawsuits against anyone who infringes these technologies. A “patent troll”, as they say across the Atlantic. 450 of the $600 million negotiated under this agreement was borrowed by Catapult IP Innovations Inc. and will be immediately paid to BlackBerry in cash. The payment of the remaining 150 million will not take place for three years.