Nortel in Sale of Residual Patent Assets Through Bankruptcy Auction

Cleary Gottlieb represented Nortel Networks on the Section 363 bankruptcy sale of its residual patent assets through a bankruptcy auction to a consortium consisting of Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research In Motion and Sony for $4.5 billion, an increase of $3.6 billion from Ranger Inc.’s original stalking horse bid for these assets. The sale resulted from a four day auction that took place in Cleary Gottlieb’s New York office from June 27 through June 30. A joint hearing before courts in the United States and Canada was held on July 11 to formally approve the sale.

Nortel has been a client of Cleary Gottlieb for more than 20 years. The firm is currently acting as U.S. bankruptcy counsel to Nortel and affiliates in their U.S. Chapter 11 proceedings, which are closely coordinated with proceedings in Canada, the United Kingdom and France.

Cleary Gottlieb has represented Nortel on its prior Section 363 bankruptcy auction sales, including the:

• sale of its wireless infrastructure assets to Ericsson for $1.13 billion (November 2009);
• sale of its global Enterprise Solutions business to Avaya for a total of $915 million (December 2009);
• sale of its Optical Networking and Carrier Ethernet businesses to Ciena for $774 million (March 2010);
• sale of its GSM/GSM-R business in Europe and Taiwan to Ericsson and Kapsch CarrierCom for $103 million (March 2010);
• sale of its Carrier VoIP and Application Solutions to GENBAND for $282 million (May 2010); and
• sale of its Multiservice Switch business to Ericsson for $65 million (September 2010).