Microsoft, AOL close $1.056 billion patent deal
AOL has announced that it has closed its mega patent deal with Microsoft, which paid $1.056 billion for a portfolio filled with more than 800 patents.
The two tech giants first announced the deal back in early April -- only for Microsoft to then pull a switcheroo and sell more than 600 of the acquired patents to Facebook for $550 million.
Regardless of the Facebook matter, AOL is now in the clear and looking forward to what it can do with the badly-needed extra cash.
But AOL didn't give away all of the patents in its repertoire. The beleaguered Internet provider still owns over 300 patents and patent applications covering advertising, search, content generation/management, social networking, mapping, multimedia/streaming, and security. Not to mention AOL also received a license to the patents being sold to Microsoft.
AOL chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong remarked in a statement that "you should expect us to continue our momentum of creating and unlocking shareholder value through continued operational improvements and executing on our strategy.”
Specifically AOL has promised to return 100 percent of the patent proceeds to shareholders. A plan on how to do this is still being hammered out, and AOL is expected to reveal a roadmap by the end of June.
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