RE:RE:Divesture of Wilan? This is an excellent note Cabbie.
You may not have seen but the house passed the infrastructure bill. So the race is now on once Biden officially signs it into law.
It will take a bit of time for all the money to be made available, but I assume states have prepared a big backlog of ideas in advance of the approval.
A bid-ask spread on a divestiture is too wide without the clarity of the Apple decision on the wireless portfolio.
The wireless portfolio value is determined with a finding of infringement and validity by a major handset maker and on a standard essential patent. The Apple decision provides that clarity.
There is no successful pure play publicly traded patent licensing entity except for Interdigital. All have exited or sold the patents. BlackBerry recognizes that the public markets undervalue its patent assets.
Patent licensing entities are much better owned by private equity or pension funds that are looking for diversification into assets that are not correlated to market returns. Read the article here for a financial sponsor perspective.
https://www.stout.com/en/insights/article/patents-alternative-asset-class-financial-sponsor-perspective
Fortress IP is closing another $400M patent opportunities fund after its first fund has been successful. They have experience in wireless and semiconductor patent assertions and are not clouded by the scrutiny of the public markets.
I believe they would benefit from owning WiLans patent portfolio as well as the partnership capability that they wouldn't need to recreate. They are also embroiled in other litigations that overlap with WiLans unlicensed target list and would be additive to their licensing efforts.