Patent risk management company RPX Corp said on Tuesday it would purchase patents owned by Apple Inc and other firms for $900 million, helping to further scale back lawsuits over smartphone technology.The sale consists of the more than 4,000 patents still owned by Rockstar Consortium, which was formed from the $4.5 billion purchase of about 6,000 Nortel Network Corp patents in 2011 following its bankruptcy.The deal puts an end to litigation started last year by Rockstar against several handset manufacturers whose phones operate on Google Inc's Android operating system, which fiercely competes with Apple mobile products.While the sale price is far less than what Rockstar had paid for the original 6,000 patents, the most valuable 2,000 of them had already been distributed to consortium members, RPX Chief Executive John Amster said.
Apple Inc. (Apple) designs, manufactures and markets mobile communication and media devices, personal computers, and portable digital music players, and a variety of related software, services, peripherals, networking solutions, and third-party digital content and applications. Shares of AAPL fell by 0.29% or $-0.325/share to $112.62. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $70.51 and as high as $119.75. On average, 54244500 shares of AAPL exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 17108036.
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