DOJ Set To Approve Google's Acquisition Of Motorola Mobility: Report
Agency Also Set to OK Consortium's Purchase of Nortel Patents, According to WSJ
Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 2/8/2012 7:22:12 PM
The U.S. Justice Department is expected to approve Google's $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility as early as next week, although the agency will "closely monitor" how the Internet giant uses the patents it's acquiring, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed sources.
Google announced its surprise bid for Motorola Mobility in August 2011, a deal driven primarily by Google's desire to obtain the latter's portfolio of more than 17,000 patents to protect its Android mobile operating system from litigation by rivals like Apple and Microsoft.
Antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe "remain concerned about Google's commitment to license key Motorola patents to competitors on fair terms" and will monitor how Google uses them, according to the Wall Street Journal. The European Commission has set a deadline of Monday, Feb. 13, to decide whether to approve the acquisition.
Next week, the DOJ is also set to approve the acquisition by a consortium of technology companies -- which include Apple, Microsoft and Research In Motion -- of a group of Nortel Networks patents for $4.5 billion, the Journal reported. The agency had been concerned about the potential the companies would abuse the patent holdings, according to the newspaper.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the WSJ report.
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