In 2011, bankrupt telecom giant Nortel auctioned its last asset: roughly 6,000 patents and applications. Google opened at $900 million. The Rockstar consortium — Apple, Microsoft, Ericsson, RIM, Sony, EMC — won at $4.5 billion.
The IP move
Decades of disciplined filing — including early work on LTE and wireless standards — created an asset that survived the company itself. The portfolio's value did not come from volume alone but from where the patents sat: on technologies everyone else would need.
The takeaways
A portfolio is a balance sheet asset, not a filing cabinet — it can be sold, licensed, pledged.
Where you file matters more than how much: coverage of what others must use commands premiums.
Even in failure, well-chosen IP returns capital to creditors and shareholders.
The lesson for your business
File with a thesis, not a habit. A 12-month portfolio plan — what to file, what to let lapse, what to spend on first — is how a small company builds assets that outlast products.
