Two BIG acquisitions happened over the last week. One is big for the smartphone space, and the other is big for the speech industry. I think they both had something to do with technology patents.
Google acquired Motorola. As everyone knows, Google has been wrapped up in a lot of legal feuds over Android. Android is certainly doing well, its competitors want to knock it down, and patent infringement seems to be the preferred means of fighting. Long established companies like Microsoft, RIM and Apple have had a lot of time to build a patent portfolio…on top of that they recently outbid Google on the Nortel patent acquisition. SO… Google has to beef up its patent portfolio quickly to fight back and eventually do what big companies do – agree to cross license and stop paying the law firms! Or maybe Google just wants a boatload of patents so they can be comfortable indemnifying all the Android users.
So at the end of July, Google bought a boatload (well over 1000) of patents from IBM (Nuance bought a bunch of patents from IBM as well focused on speech tech!)
Now Google buys MOTO. Here’s something really interesting. The price paid for Nortel was about $4.5B for 6000 patents (plus patents applied for etc). That’s about $750K/patent. Google underbid and didn’t get in on the deal. Google bought MOTO Mobility for $12.5B for a little over 17,000 patents… Just under $750K/patent! VERY INTERESTING…seems like $750K/patents is the going rate for large patent portfolios!!!!!
Specialized portfolios in speech technology are worth even more!
Nuance acquires Loquendo. I’m sure this wasn’t just for patents…it was taking out one of their only competitors for both SR and TTS, and Nuance got a GREAT price for a company with a lot of excellent technology. I have no idea how many patents Loquendo has…I think 7 in the US and probably a lot more in Europe. Let’s estimate that they had 35 patents total. At $75M, that would be around $2M per patent, which isn’t far off of the per-patent price Nuance paid for SVOX, who had 60-80 patents. The revenue multipliers seem pretty consistent too…SVOX was doing around $25M in sales and was bought for around 6x sales…likewise Loquendo was doing about $12.5M in sales and was bought for ABOUT SIX TIMES SALES. What does Nuance trade at? ABOUT SIX TIMES SALES. So what does that mean? Well you could argue that if Nuance pays less or equal to its revenue multiplier (6xsales) for an acquisition, then the patents essentially come free because the acquired revenues should immediately boost Nuance’s valuation by close to the purchase price.
I wonder if that’s how Nuance thinks about it. Then they wouldn’t be paying $2M for a patent or even $750K…they’d essentially get them for free and in the process build the biggest database of speech patents in the world.
Maybe Nuance’s strategy isn’t really about taking out competitors and buying customers through M&A, but maybe they want to own the majority of patents in the speech tech space. Nuance certainly hasn’t made money in using patents for lawsuits. Dave Grannan, Vlingo’s CEO was recently quoted as saying, ”We are happy to report that with this latest ruling, Nuance’s record remains perfect in patent infringement trials, they haven’t won any.” You go, Dave!
So why would Nuance want so many speech patents if they can’t make money in court? Well I’ve blogged earlier about their use of patent infringement in acquisitions. Maybe they are looking to be bought by a Google, Apple, or Microsoft…that patent portfolio could certainly do a lot in user experience fights. But if cross licensing agreements get worked out between the companies big enough to acquire Nuance, then where does that leave Nuance?
Well…without a lot of competition for sure!