BlackBerry wants to sell mobile phone patents to patent troll

The Canadian company BlackBerry is selling its patents in the field of mobile phones, sending and receiving messages and mobile networks. The buyer is a company that probably wants to use the patents to make money, a so-called patent troll.

BlackBerry has reached an agreement with the American Catapult for 600 million dollars, the company writes. Part of the deal is that BlackBerry will get back a license to use technology from the patents. It’s not about all patents that BlackBerry holds, because all patents related to BlackBerry’s current core business, business software and security, are held by the company itself.

The deal is not yet complete, because various authorities have to approve the transaction. According to the Canadian company’s estimate, this will happen within a little more than six months. Catapult is a company that was created to buy the patents, according to the documentation BlackBerry has filed with the US government.

BlackBerry has the patents because it made smartphones and software for them for years. It stopped doing that in 2016. BlackBerry phones have continued to appear since then, but those were from companies that had a license to the brand name. The Chinese TCL, among others, has released the BlackBerry Key series.

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