Chapter 437 Patent War

If you ask Mick Zafilovsky what unforeseen circumstances mean, he will definitely understand the meaning deeply even though he cannot understand Chinese.

It seems that no one has been willing to believe that even now, Canada's Nortel Networks, which has a century-old glorious history, will be reduced to an embarrassing situation. It seems that there are still quite a few people in the company. , still surviving at the peak period when the total market value was as high as 267 billion US dollars.

Mick Zafilovsky came to Nortel Networks from Motorola in 2005. For this reason, Nortel Networks paid him a termination fee of more than 10 million. What he did after coming to Nortel Networks Everything was done to stop the company's decline, but even though he tried his best, he still couldn't stop the company's decline.

Perhaps numbers can more vividly describe the current situation of Nortel Networks, because their total market value has dropped from US$267 billion in 2000 to more than US$10 billion now, and the company's value has shrunk by more than 20%. times.

But this was achieved after the company sold many industries. For example, they sold their 3G business to Alcatel for US$320 million, which made them completely withdraw from the 3G market.

The decline of Nortel Networks comes not only from business and external competition, but also from within the company. For example, the financial fraud scandal in 2003 not only caused the Toronto Stock Exchange to plummet, but also caused Nortel Networks to suffer. At the end of 2006, a settlement agreement was reached with the shareholders who sued them, but for this the company had to pay US$2.45 billion.

As the saying goes, when the house leaks, it rains all night. Mick Zafilovsky can deeply feel this helplessness now.

But what makes him feel even more helpless is that the world has completely changed. Whether it is the once giant Nortel Networks or the mobile phone industry giant Motorola, the situation in the past two years has been telling him a cruel truth. The reality is that the future will no longer belong to them.

But will it be his future?

Mick Zafilovsky looked at the young Chinese man with black hair and yellow skin in front of him. He is the fastest-rising super-rich man in the world in the past few years. He has created some of the most famous companies on the Internet. website, and also developed a mobile phone that is said to be revolutionary in the field of communications, which brought him and his company amazing profits.

And all this happened in less than three or four years.

There is a serious generation gap, that's for sure, because Mick Zafilovsky asked someone to investigate this Chinese man named Ye Qiu. Who knew? If you don't investigate, you won't know. After investigation, you find out that he is still the current one. The world's most famous football club head coach owns a professional team in Europe that competes in the Premier League and Champions League.

To this end, he also specially supplemented some European football knowledge, hoping that he could have more common topics with him.

Now everyone knows that being with Yee Technology is equivalent to embracing a thigh that is as thick as it can be. This company currently holds nearly 10 billion US dollars in cash. If all this money is transferred to Nortel, With the Internet, all difficulties and troubles will be solved, but the problem is, the money belongs to others!

"Mr. Ye Qiu, thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to come to Toronto from Europe!" Mick Zafilovsky looks very young, in his thirties, a little chubby, but very energetic , but in fact he is already over fifty years old.

This Macedonian-American has a very brilliant resume. He worked for General Electric for twenty-four years and held a very important position. In 2005, he took over the Motorola mobile phone department as president. In 2005, he moved to North Korea. With a compensation of US$11.5 million from Telecom Networks, he came to Nortel Networks.

His resume has witnessed his ability, and also witnessed a very realistic situation, that is, he does not have much affection for Nortel Networks. For him, Nortel Networks is just a new level for him to change jobs, but now The steps seemed to be sinking.

"Mr. Zafilovsky, I believe in my colleagues..." Ye Qiu looked at Eliza Moon sitting next to him, as well as Leaf Technology's COO Sheryl Sandberg and other Leaf Technologies. The senior management, they are all the manipulators behind this acquisition. Leaf Technology has been preparing for more than half a year to get to this point.

"...I have had very in-depth exchanges with you. I also believe that you know better than anyone else the current situation of Nortel Networks. Now you have only two ways to go. First, let the Canadian government provide support funds. But I believe that as Nortel Networks’ financial situation deteriorates, this road will no longer work.”

Nortel Networks is not without valuable assets. On the contrary, many of this company's assets that are coveted by the outside world, or some assets that have not yet been noticed by the outside world, are very valuable. But the problem is that they have no cash.

For a company of this size, not having cash is a very scary thing.

The current situation of Ye Zi Technology is exactly the opposite. Ye Qiu now has nearly 10 billion US dollars in cash in the company account alone, and he also has several billion euros in cash in Swiss banks, which is enough for him to easily Complete the acquisition he wanted.

Ye Qiu had made sufficient preparations before, and Eliza personally took charge of this plan because it was related to the future development of Leaf Technology. If it succeeded, Leaf Technology would take off. If it failed, Leaf Technology would continue to be controlled by others in the next few years.

"The second point, I believe it is what you introduced to my team before, selling the company's assets!"

Mick Zafirovsky nodded, "Yes, Mr. Ye Qiu."

He had to admit that the first way was not feasible, and the second way was to drink poison to quench thirst, but everything had to be viewed this way. If you don't sell it, it won't take long, half a year at the fastest, two years at the slowest, Nortel Networks will still go bankrupt sooner or later, but if you sell it, you can still buy some time, and there may be room for maneuver.

In fact, Mick Zafirovsky has already made his thoughts public at the company's board of directors. He wants to sell the wireless business because it is a money-losing piece of goods, but the annual investment in research and development funds is a lot. At the same time, he does not rule out selling the fiber optic network and Ethernet business with an annual revenue of US$2 billion, which is Nortel Networks' most valuable business.

Zafirovsky wants to focus on the enterprise network and operator service departments, and the optical network business currently ranks among the top companies in the world, such as Nokia Siemens, Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE, and they are all very interested in Nortel Networks' business.

And Leaf Technology is eyeing the nearly 9,000 patents held by Nortel Networks.

As a rising star, Leaf Technology is poor in patents. Even in the process of developing the Zeus mobile phone, it applied for many patents, but compared with giants such as Nokia and Motorola, even compared with rivals such as Apple and Microsoft, Leaf Technology lags far behind.

Is there any way to get enough patents for Leaf Technology in the shortest time?

Acquisition, and the more than 8,000 patents in Nortel Networks' hands are a big cake in Ye Qiu's eyes, and the most fatal thing is that this big cake is not yet familiar to people, and even its owner, Nortel Networks itself, does not realize its value and how much role it can play in the future.

This is also related to the research and development principles that Nortel Networks has always believed in. For example, as early as 1990, Nortel Networks developed a concept phone with many functions of the Zeus phone. From this point, we can see the company's research and development and innovation capabilities. They even applied for many patents for this, but ultimately failed to make a phone.

Moreover, the company always believes in a defensive principle when it comes to patents, that is, not to take the initiative to file lawsuits through patents.

For example, they reached an agreement with Nokia Siemens to use each other's patents. In other words, the purpose of their patent application is only to avoid being sued, or to share each other's patents with each other, rather than using patents to attack opponents.

Now Microsoft, Apple, and even Google have not taken action against Leaf Technology, but this does not mean that Leaf Technology has no handle in their hands, because high-tech things, especially smart phones, really want to fight a patent war, that is very easy, because there are so many parts and software programs in a mobile phone, there will always be problems.

When the other party realizes this and launches a patent war, Leaf Technology will have no patents and will be at the mercy of others. The more you sell now, the more you will lose in the future. So they don't take action against you now, and they are happy to see you sell well. When they think the time is right, they will directly launch a patent war and divide most of your profits without any cost.

Nortel Networks is a very interesting company. They strongly encourage engineers and technicians to apply for patents, so they have accumulated more than 8,000 patents covering a wide range of fields such as 3G, 4G, WIFI, voice, optics, Ethernet, Internet, semiconductors, etc., but they themselves do not understand the value of these patents.

Later, Nortel Networks went bankrupt, and Google announced that it would acquire their patents for $900 million, but soon, Microsoft, Apple and other companies also formed an alliance to snipe. In the end, both sides kept raising the price. Google even raised it from $900 million to $4.4 billion, but in the end, the alliance of Microsoft and Apple completed the bid with $4.5 billion.

Ye Qiu knew about this because before he traveled through time, Apple and Microsoft were fighting patent wars everywhere. Even though Google had already acquired Motorola at a high price, it was still passive everywhere. Later, Apple and Microsoft turned their attention to mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung and HTC, hoping to defeat their competitors with the help of patent wars.

It can be seen how amazing the value of this batch of patents is.

Originally, in Ye Qiu's opinion, it would cost a lot of money to acquire Nortel Networks' huge patents, as well as their wireless and voice business and R\u0026D departments. However, according to the information given by Eliza Moon, it seems that this is not the case. They seem to have not yet realized the value of patents.

Ye Qiu certainly didn't know that in fact, Nortel Networks noticed the value of patents when they declared bankruptcy and reorganized their business. Then they streamlined more than 8,000 patents into more than 6,000 and opened them to public bidding.

Now, the price of Nortel Networks' most valuable department is only about 2 billion, and even more than 1 billion can be sold. It can be seen that in their plan, wireless business is not the focus, and their focus is on operators and enterprise networks.

But what’s interesting is that in the future, Qualcomm, the leading company in mobile phone chips, will have to pay them patents. It can be seen that if we obtain the patents of this company, it will be a huge supplement to Yezi Technology and will make Yezi Technology leapfrog. It has become one of the companies with the largest patent library. Even if the mobile phones cannot be sold in the future, the patent fees collected will be an astonishing sum.

And with sufficiently powerful patents, mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung, and even some hardware manufacturers including Qualcomm, must rely more closely on Yee Technology. Otherwise, patents will be a big obstacle above their heads. The Sword of Moss, which will completely lay a solid foundation for Ye Zi's technology.

Ye Qiu made a special trip from Europe because Nortel Networks wanted to sell and Yezi Technology wanted to buy it. However, there were some differences in price between the two parties. It was true that Nortel Networks wanted to sell off the business, but they also wanted to raise the price, and Ye Qiu wanted to raise the price. Technology took the opportunity to lower prices, but Ye Qiu had to avoid the same contradiction that Google had committed in his previous life.

At that time, Google initiated the acquisition for 900 million, but the two parties had some differences on the price. The more the talks became, the more eye-catching they became, even attracting the intervention of Apple and Microsoft. In the end, Nortel Networks realized the price of these patents, so it gave up the negotiation directly. Choosing a public auction, the final price soared, climbing all the way to US$4.5 billion.

The current asking price of Nortel Networks is mainly around 900 million US dollars, while Yee Technology hopes to get it for 600 million, and it is impossible for Zafirovsky to sell all relevant patents to Yee Technology. After all, some patents involve them. Some other businesses, so it was impossible to sell them all, were eventually streamlined to more than 7,000 items.

With the scope of negotiation, the entanglement on price immediately began. Both parties also showed their own negotiation skills. On the Ye Zi Technology side, Eliza Moon was the main one. Ye Qiu except for the beginning, the rest. He spent the whole time listening, and it was not until more than three hours had passed and the negotiations between the two parties reached a deadlock that he spoke again.

"Seven hundred million. In addition to the ownership of the patents we have listed, as well as your company's related R\u0026D departments and personnel, I also hope to get the permanent use rights of the other patents!" Ye Qiu planned to kill immediately.

Eliza Moon and Sheryl Sandberg, who were sitting next to him, were a little surprised and directly raised the price by 100 million. Isn't this a bit too hasty? After all, time is now favorable for Ye Zi Technology!

They are right to think so, but Ye Qiu has his own worries, that is, once other competitors realize the purpose of Ye Zi Technology, they will definitely attack him. By then, let alone hundreds of millions, you will have more than a billion. , billions, you can get it, otherwise you will always be controlled by others.

Sure enough, Mick Zafilovsky is also a cunning leader. When he saw that Ye Qiu did not take it easy like other senior executives of Ye Zi Technology, but adopted a more anxious attitude of wanting to complete the acquisition as soon as possible, he immediately knew There was a chance, but he didn't want to scare off this big customer, so he thought about it and suggested: "Mr. Ye Qiu, we can agree to your request, but as for the price, we still ask for 900 million US dollars!"

Sheryl Sandberg knew what Ye Qiu was thinking and how important it was to Ye Qiu to win Nortel Networks. She just felt that if it continued, it would be beneficial to the company and the price would not be that high, so she decided to Speak up and express your opinion.

But at this moment, Eliza Moon gently pulled her up and shook her head. She knew Ye Qiu too well. He was a guy who had no profit and couldn’t afford to be early. If it wasn’t really necessary, he wouldn’t do it. The only explanation for being so generous is that he feels that these patents and R\u0026D personnel are indeed worth so much money.

After hearing this, Ye Qiu thought to himself for a while, raised his head, looked at Zafilovsky again, and smiled, "Mr. Zafilovsky, I came to Toronto with very strong sincerity, but This does not mean that I am a person who likes to bargain with others. On the contrary, people who know me well know that I have little patience.”

When he said this, Ye Qiu put his hands on the table and stared at Zafilovsky. He felt that it was necessary to put some pressure on the American, "Please believe that this is my last time, and it is also the last time for our company." The last offer is US$800 million, I hope you will consider it again!”

Even two or three years later, when the patent war has completely begun and everyone realizes the value of patents, Google's first offer was only 900 million. Now that Ye Qiu has offered 800 million, that is already considered Very sincere.

But if you consider the future and can get some core patents in chips, semiconductors, 4G networks, voice services, etc., then this acquisition will be very valuable.

Of course, now Ye Qiu has to show that I have cut off my flesh and blood, and if you insist on the price, I will have no choice but to withdraw from the negotiation.

Mick Zafilovski is willing to come to negotiate, which shows that he has been authorized and recognized by the board of directors. I believe they have already established a psychological price, and Ye Qiu is sure that there is definitely not 800 million, so after listening to Ye Qiu After Qiu's words, Zafilovsky looked at the other members of the negotiating team around him. After getting the hint, he nodded towards Ye Qiu.

“I hope we can have a happy cooperation!”

Ye Qiu stretched out his hand and shook hands with Zafilovsky, "I hope so too!"

When things came to this point, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. The negotiations that lasted for more than four hours were finally over.

The entire negotiation process ended with Ye Qiu's final decision. Leaf Technology acquired more than 7,000 patents from Nortel Networks for $800 million, and also acquired a large R\u0026D team, but this does not mean that everything is over.

Three days after the negotiation ended, the two parties officially signed the acquisition agreement.

This news was like a heavy bomb, which immediately exploded in North America, and surprised everyone at the big hand of Leaf Technology. Because Shirley Sandberg had previously used her personal connections to do public relations with the government, the government did not make any difficulties in this acquisition, but directly approved it.

So far, Leaf Technology has completely changed from a patent weakling to a patent strongling, especially in the fields of smartphones and the Internet, where its patent technology has surpassed Google and Apple. Even Google's search, application framework and cloud network may face patent lawsuits from Leaf Technology.

It was also at this moment that Leaf Technology truly became a strong company qualified to enter the ranks of top high-tech companies.

But the acquisition of Nortel Networks is just the beginning.