AOL sells more than 800 patents to Microsoft in $1 billion+ cash deal

Huge news from the patent front this morning, as AOL (note: my employer until very recently) and Microsoft have struck a deal that will see the former sell more than 800 of its patents to the Redmond software giant. In addition, Microsoft will license more than 300 additional patents and applications.

Aggregate proceeds of the agreement is a whopping $1.056 billion, in cash.

At December 31, 2011, AOL had only $407.5 million of cash. Pro forma for the sale and license, as of December 31, 2011, AOL would have had roughly $15 per share of cash on hand, it said. Its market cap was $1.75 billion at Friday’s market close.

According to the terms of the deal, AOL will retain over 300 patents and patent applications spanning technologies for advertising, search, content management, social networking and mapping, among others, following the sale.

In addition, AOL received a license to the 800 patents being sold to Microsoft.

AOL expects the deal, which includes the sale of a subsidiary on which AOL expects to record a capital loss for tax purposes, to be completed by the end of 2012, pending satisfaction of customary conditions and regulatory approvals.

Source : thenextweb

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