The Godfather of Greenery

Chapter 437 Patent War

What is unpredictable? If you ask Mick Zafilovski this sentence, although he can't understand Chinese, he will definitely be able to deeply understand the meaning.

It seems that all along, even now, no one is willing to believe that the Canadian Nortel Networks, which has a glorious history of one hundred years, will be reduced to an embarrassing situation. It seems that there are still quite a few people in the company , still living in the peak period when the total market value was as high as 670 billion US dollars.

Mick Zafilovski came to Nortel Networks from Motorola in 2005. For this reason, Nortel Networks paid him a termination fee of more than 1000 million. After he came to Nortel Networks, everything he did It was all to stop the decline of this company, but even if he tried his best, he still couldn't stop the decline of this company.

Perhaps the numbers can better describe the current situation of Nortel Networks more vividly, because their total market value has fallen from 2000 billion US dollars in 670 to more than [-] billion US dollars now, and the company's value has shrunk by more than [-] times.

But this was achieved after the company sold off a lot of properties, for example, they sold their 3G business to Alcatel for $3 million, which made them completely withdraw from the 2G market.

The decline of Nortel Networks not only stems from business and external competition, but also from within the company. For example, the financial fraud incident in 2003 not only caused the Toronto Stock Exchange to plummet, but also made Nortel Networks unstoppable. Not at the end of 2006, reached a settlement agreement with the shareholders who sued them, but the company had to pay 24 billion US dollars for this.

As the so-called house leak happens to rain overnight, Mick Zafilovski can deeply feel this helplessness now.

But what makes him feel even more helpless is that the world has completely changed. Whether it is the once giant Nortel Networks or the mobile phone industry giant Motorola, the situation in the past two years has been telling him a cruel truth. The reality is that the future will no longer be their future.

But will it be his future?

Mick Zafilovski looked at the black-haired and yellow-skinned young Chinese in front of him. He is the world's fastest-growing super rich in the past few years. He has created several of the most well-known companies on the Internet. At the same time, he also developed a mobile phone that is said to be revolutionary in the field of communication, which brought him and his company amazing profits.

And all of this happened in just less than three or four years.

There is a serious generation gap, that's for sure, because Mick Zafilovski asked people to investigate this Chinese named Ye Qiu, who knows, if you don't check, you don't know, and after checking, it turns out that he is still the current The head coach of the world's most famous football club owns a professional team in Europe that competes in the Premier League and Champions League.

For this reason, he also specially supplemented some European football knowledge, hoping that he could have more common topics with him.

Now everyone knows that getting close to Leaf Technology is equivalent to hugging a thigh that is too thick. This company now holds nearly tens of billions of dollars in cash. If all the money is transferred to Nortel Internet, all difficulties and troubles will be easily solved, but the problem is, the money belongs to others!
"Mr. Ye Qiu, thank you very much for coming to Toronto from Europe in spite of your busy schedule!" Mick Zafilovski looked very young, in his 30s, a little fat, but very energetic, But in fact he is over 50 years old.

This Macedonian American has a very brilliant resume. He has worked in General Electric for 24 years and held very important positions. In 2000, he entered the Motorola mobile phone department as president. In 2005, he worked in Nortel Networks. With $1150 million in compensation, he came to Nortel Networks.

His resume has witnessed his ability, and also witnessed a very realistic situation, that is, he has little affection for Nortel Networks. For him, Nortel Networks is just a new step for him to change jobs. The steps seem to be sinking.

"Mr. Zafilovsky, I trust my colleagues..." Ye Qiu looked at Eliza Moon sitting next to him, and Leaf Technology's COO Shirley Sandberg and other Leaf Technology The executives, they are all the behind-the-scenes operators of this acquisition. Leaf Technology has been preparing for more than half a year to get to this point.

"..I have had very in-depth exchanges with you. I also believe that you know the current situation of Nortel Networks better than anyone else. Now you have only two ways to go. First, let the Canadian government provide support funds. But I believe that with the deteriorating financial situation of Nortel Networks, this path is no longer feasible."

It is not that Nortel Networks has no valuable assets. On the contrary, many of the company's assets that are coveted by the outside world, or some assets that have not been paid attention to by the outside world, are very valuable, but the problem is that they have no cash.

For a company of this size, not having cash is a very scary thing.

The current situation of Leaf Technology is exactly the opposite. Ye Qiu now has nearly 100 billion US dollars in cash in the company account alone, and he himself has billions of euros in cash in the Swiss bank. These are enough for him to complete the project easily. The acquisition he wanted.

Ye Qiu had done a lot of preparation before, and Elisa personally worked on the plan, because it was related to the future development of Leaf Technology. If it succeeds, Leaf Technology will take off. If it fails, Leaf Technology will continue to be controlled by others in the next few years .

"The second point, I believe it is what you introduced to my team before, selling the company's assets!"

Mick Zafilovski nodded, "Yes, Mr. Ye Qiu."

He has to admit that the first way is not going to work, and the second way is to drink doves to quench thirst, but everything has to be looked at this way. If you don’t sell it, it won’t take long. It’s half a year at the fastest, or two years at the slowest. Sooner or later, Nortel Networks will They are still going to go bankrupt, but if you sell it, you can still get some time in exchange, and maybe there is still room for change.

In fact, Mick Zafilovski has disclosed his thoughts on the company's board of directors. He wants to sell the wireless business, because it is a money-losing product with a lot of research and development funds invested every year. At the same time, he does not rule out selling The fiber-optic network and Ethernet business with annual revenue of 20 billion US dollars, he is the most valuable business of Nortel Networks.

Zafilovsky wants to concentrate on the enterprise network and carrier service sector, among which the optical network business is currently ranked among the top companies in the world, such as Nokia Siemens, Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE, they are all interested in Nortel This part of the network business is very interesting.

And Leaf Technology is focusing on the nearly [-] patents held by Nortel Networks.

As a rising star, Leaf Technology is poor in terms of patents. Even though it has applied for a lot of patents in the process of developing the Zeus mobile phone, let alone comparing with giants like Nokia and Motorola, even with companies like Apple and Microsoft. Compared with the opponents, Leaf Technology is far behind.

Is there any way to obtain enough patents for Leaf Technology in the shortest possible time?
Acquisition, and the more than 8000 patents in the hands of Nortel Networks are a big cake in Ye Qiu's eyes, and the most terrible thing is that this big cake is still not familiar to people, even his owner, Nortel The network itself does not realize his value and how much he can play in the future.

This also has a certain relationship with the research and development principles that Nortel Networks has always believed in. For example, Nortel Networks developed a concept mobile phone with many functions of the Zeus mobile phone as early as 1990. From this point, we can see that The R&D and innovation capabilities of this company were shown, and they even applied for many patents for this, but they failed to make a mobile phone in the end.

Moreover, this company always believes in a defensive principle when dealing with patents, that is, it does not take the initiative to file lawsuits through patents.

For example, they have reached an agreement with Nokia Siemens Corporation to use each other's patents, that is to say, the purpose of their patent application is only to avoid being sued, or to share each other's patents with each other, rather than to use patents to attack opponents .

At present, Microsoft, Apple, and even Google have not taken action against Leaf Technology, but this does not mean that Leaf Technology has no handle in their hands, because high-tech things, especially smart phones, really want to fight a patent war, it is very easy Things, with so many components and software programs in a phone, there will always be problems.

When the other party realizes this and launches a patent war, Leaf Technology has no patents in its hands, so it can only be slaughtered. The more you sell now, the more you will lose in the future, so they will be happy to see you if they don’t do anything to you now. Best-selling, wait until they think the time is right, start a patent war directly, share most of your profits, and there is no cost.

Nortel Networks is a very interesting company. They encourage engineers and technicians to apply for patents, so they have accumulated more than 8000 patents covering 3G, 4G, WIFI, voice, optics, Ethernet, Internet, semiconductors, etc. Patents in a wide range of fields, but they themselves do not understand the value of these patents.

So that later, when Nortel Networks went bankrupt, Google announced the acquisition of their patents for US$9 million, but soon, Microsoft, Apple and other companies also formed an alliance to attack, and finally the two sides kept raising prices, and Google even went from 9 million was raised to 44 billion, but in the end the alliance of Microsoft and Apple completed the bidding with 45 billion US dollars.

Ye Qiu knew this because before he traveled, Apple and Microsoft were fighting patent wars everywhere. Even though Google had bought Motorola at a high price, it was still passively beaten everywhere, and then Apple and Microsoft were targeting Samsung and HTC. Waiting for mobile phone manufacturers, hoping to use patent wars to defeat competitors in one fell swoop.

It can be seen how amazing the value of these patents is.

Originally, in Ye Qiu's view, the acquisition of Nortel Networks' huge patents, as well as their wireless and voice services and R&D departments should cost a lot of money, but according to the information given by Eliza Moon, it seems that this is not the case One thing, they seem to have not yet realized the value of patents.

Of course, Ye Qiu didn't know. In fact, Nortel Networks noticed the value of patents only after they declared bankruptcy and reorganized their business. After that, they condensed more than 8000 patents into more than 6000 and disclosed them to the public. Open auction.

Now, the price of the most valuable part of Nortel Networks is only about 20 billion, or even more than a billion can be sold. It can be seen that in their plan, the wireless business is not the focus, and their focus is on the operator and enterprise networks.

But what is interesting is that in the future, Qualcomm, the leading company in mobile phone chips, will have to pay them for patents. It can be seen that if they get the patents of this company, it will be a huge supplement to Leaf Technology and will make Leaf Technology leap forward. It has become one of the companies with the largest patent pool. Even if the mobile phone cannot be sold in the future, it will be an astonishing sum of money just by collecting patent fees.

And with strong enough patents, Samsung and other mobile phone manufacturers, and even some hardware manufacturers including Qualcomm, must rely more closely on Leaf Technology, otherwise, patents are a big deal on top of their heads. The Sword of Moss, and this will completely lay a solid foundation for Leaf Technology.

Ye Qiu made a special trip from Europe because Nortel Networks wanted to sell and Leaf Technology wanted to buy, but there were some differences in prices between the two parties. It was true that Nortel Networks wanted to sell their business, but they also wanted to raise the price. Technology is taking the opportunity to lower prices, but Ye Qiu must avoid a contradiction committed by Google in his previous life.

At that time, Google initiated the acquisition with 45 million yuan, but the two parties had some disagreements on the price. After that, the talks became more and more eye-catching, and even attracted the intervention of Apple and Microsoft. In the end, Nortel Networks realized the price of these patents, so they gave up the negotiation directly. The public auction was chosen, and the final price rose all the way to $[-] billion.

The current Nortel Networks is mainly asking for around 7000 million US dollars, and Leaf Technology hopes to get it for [-] million, and it is impossible for Zafilovsky to sell all relevant patents to Leaf Technology, after all, some patents involve them. Some other businesses, so it is impossible to sell all of them, and the final streamlined number is more than [-].

With the scope of the negotiation, the entanglement on the price immediately began. Both parties also showed their own negotiation skills. The Leaf Technology side is dominated by Elisa Moon. Apart from the beginning, Ye Qiu does the rest He was listening all the time, and he didn't speak again until more than three hours had passed and the negotiations between the two sides had reached a deadlock.

"[-] million, in addition to the ownership of the patents we listed, as well as your company's related research and development departments and personnel, I also hope to obtain the permanent right to use the rest of the patents!" Ye Qiu planned to kill immediately.

Eliza Moon and Sheryl Sandberg, who were sitting next to him, were a little surprised. They directly raised the price by [-] million. Isn't this a little too anxious?After all, the time is now favorable to Leaf Technology!

They are right to think so, but Ye Qiu has his own worries, that is, once other competitors realize the purpose of Leaf Technology, they will definitely attack them. At that time, let alone hundreds of millions, you will have more than a billion , tens of billions, you can figure it out, otherwise you will always be controlled by others.

Sure enough, Mick Zafilovski is also a cunning and cunning leader. When he saw that Ye Qiu did not grind slowly like other senior executives of Leaf Technology, but took a more anxious attitude of wanting to complete the acquisition as soon as possible, he immediately knew There is a lot to do, but he didn't want to scare off this big client, so he thought about it and proposed: "Mr. Ye Qiu, we can agree to your request, but the price is, we still ask for [-] million US dollars!"

Shirley Sandberg knew Ye Qiu's thoughts, and also knew the importance of winning Nortel Networks to Leaf Technology, but felt that if it continued to grind, it would be beneficial to the company, and the price would not be so high, so they decided to Speak up and speak up.

But at this moment, Eliza Munn gave her a gentle tug and shook her head. She knew Ye Qiu too well. The only explanation that may be so generous is that he feels that these patents and R&D personnel are indeed worth so much money.

After hearing this, Ye Qiu pondered for a while, raised his head, looked at Zafilovski again, and smiled, "Mr. Zafilovski, I came to Toronto with very strong sincerity, but This does not mean that I am a person who likes to bargain with others, on the contrary, anyone who knows me well knows that I have no patience."

When he said this, Ye Qiu put his hands on the table and stared at Zafilovski. He felt that it was necessary to put some pressure on the American, "Please believe me, this is my last time, and it is our company's last time." The last offer, [-] million US dollars, I hope you can think about it again!"

Even after two or three years, when the patent war has completely started and everyone realizes the value of patents, Google's first offer was only [-] million. Now that Ye Qiu is offering [-] million, that's already considered Very sincere.

But if you consider the future and can get some core patents in chips, semiconductors, 4G networks, voice services, etc., then this acquisition is very valuable.

Of course, now Ye Qiu has to put on a face that I have sold my flesh and blood, and if you insist on the price, I can only withdraw from the negotiation.

Mick Zafilovski is willing to negotiate, which shows that he has obtained the authorization and approval of the board of directors. I believe they have already established a psychological price, and Ye Qiu can be sure that there is absolutely no [-] million, so after listening to Ye After Qiu's words, Zafilovski looked at the other members of the negotiating team around him, and after getting hints, he nodded towards Ye Qiu.

"Hope we can work together happily!"

Ye Qiu stretched out his hand and held Zafilovski together, "I hope so too!"

When the matter came to this point, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. The negotiation, which lasted for more than four hours, was finally over.

The entire negotiation process finally came to an end with Ye Qiu's final decision. Leaf Technology obtained more than 7000 patents from Nortel Networks at a price of [-] million U.S. dollars, and also obtained a huge R&D team, but this does not mean that everything is over. up.

Three days after the conclusion of the negotiations, the two parties formally signed the acquisition agreement.

This piece of news was like a blockbuster, which immediately detonated completely in North America, and everyone was surprised by the generosity of Leaf Technology, and because Sheryl Sandberg had previously conducted a government-sponsored investigation through her personal connections. Public relations, so the government did not make things difficult for this acquisition, but passed it directly.

So far, Leaf Technology has completely changed from a patent weak to a patent strong, especially in smart phones, the Internet and other patented technologies that have surpassed Google and Apple, and even Google's search, application framework and cloud computing. The network and other aspects may face patent lawsuits from Leaf Technology.

It is also at this moment that Leaf Technology has truly become a strong player qualified to enter the top high-tech companies.

But the acquisition of Nortel Networks is just the beginning.

(End of this chapter)