Lenovo buys 72 million euros in patents for mobile devices

The Chinese multinational Lenovo has bought more than 72 million euros in patents and patent licenses from American ‘patent troll’ Unwired. These include 3G and LTE patents, with which the company wants to further enter the smartphone and mobile PC market.

When the transaction is completed, Lenovo will own 21 patent families, BusinessWire reports. It is not clear for how long Lenovo can use the patents, but according to the report it is “a number of years.” The patents include standard-essential patents, which relate to important functionalities of devices. There are also patents that relate to the implementation of techniques and software on mobile devices.

Lenovo bought Motorola from Google in January. For this, the company deposited an amount of 2.11 billion euros. This purchase also involved a number of patents. The Chinese company is already producing smartphones for the Chinese market, but whether and when Lenovo smartphones will come to the Western market is unknown.

Lenovo probably buys the patents to cover itself against patent claims from other companies. It is not attractive to start patent cases against companies that have a lot of patents, because then the plaintiff runs the risk that the other company will initiate lawsuits itself.