Nortel's patents more valuable than its products

The Nortel patents sold this week for $4.5 billion to a consortium of vendors, during previous deals for Nortel's four key product groups - Enterprise, Carrier VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), Wireless and Metro Ethernet - netted just about $4 billion.

The company's CDMA wireless

Ericsson paid just in accordance with $2 billion for the company's CDMA wireless and data switching divisions, during Avaya paid just in accordance with $1 billion for its enterprise networking business. Ciena paid $770 million for Nortel's MEN, during Genband coughed up just in accordance with $300 million for VoIP.

The economies of scale tipped the scale. Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Innovation In Motion and Sony all have skin in the $4.5 billion pot, which they covet for its 6,000 patents spanning wireless, wireless 4G, data networking, optical, voice, Internet, service provider and semiconductors.