InterDigital Inc (IDCC)

[applet]

Is Moto 17000 patents really powerful?

checked this site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_top_United_States_patent_recipients

In 1997 and 1998, Moto is ranked No.4 in the US patent list. In 1999, Moto is ranked No.8, In 2000, Moto is ranked No.9. Afterwards, Moto dropped out of the top ten list.

This site doesn't have data before 1997, I guess, based on Moto's business, they shall be at the same strong position in the whole 1990's.

The logical guess is, Moto's patents are mainly 1990's. At that time, Moto is a strong player in Satellite(Iridium), Analog phone and 2G phone&infrastructure.

In 3G era, Moto didn't play very well. Its 3G infrastructure technology are mainly from HuaWei, a China company. It's phone are losing ground to Nokia.
With the product lossing ground, I don't expect they have a strong IP development in house.

So IMHO Moto's patent power may not stronger than that of Nortel, not to mention IDCC.
Google is buying the Java license. These 17000 patents are just by-products and just secondary class products.