InterDigital acquires Technicolor patent licensing business
July 31, 2018
InterDigital, a mobile technology research and development company, has completed the acquisition of the patent licensing business of Technicolor, a global technology player in the media and entertainment sector.
The final transaction includes the acquisition by InterDigital of approximately 18,000 patents and applications, across a broad range of technologies, including approximately 3,000 worldwide video coding patents and applications. The portfolio will also be supplemented by jointly-funded R&D collaboration, which will bring together the efforts of hundreds of engineers in InterDigital Labs and Technicolor Research and Innovation (R&I). Members of Technicolor’s licensing, legal and other support teams in offices in Rennes and Issy-les-Moulineaux, France; Princeton, New Jersey, and other locations join InterDigital’s team of more than 300 R&D and other staff in eleven locations around the world.
“During the months that have followed the initial announcement, we’ve had the opportunity to meet and appreciate the tremendous capabilities of Technicolor’s team and gain additional insight into the strength of the portfolio, which strengthens our licensing efforts in the mobile field while opening new markets for InterDigital,” said William J. Merritt, President and CEO of InterDigital. “We’ve also been able to gauge the tremendous capabilities of Technicolor’s Research & Innovation team, and the alignment between their research initiatives and our own in the video field.”
Under the terms of the agreement, InterDigital paid Technicolor $150 million in cash. There is no revenue sharing associated with InterDigital’s licensing of the new portfolio in the mobile industry, but Technicolor receives 42.5 per cent of all future cash receipts (net of estimated operating expenses) from InterDigital’s new licensing efforts in the consumer electronics field. As part of this transaction, InterDigital will also grant back to Technicolor a perpetual license for patents acquired in the transaction.