On July 12, 2010, after a two-week delay, the auction for the remaining "patent pool" assets of Nortel's network, which attracted worldwide attention, finally began.

The patent assets were auctioned at the New York law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Steen. amp; amp; amp; amp; amp; amp; Held in the offices of Hamilton LLP.

The bidders were divided into five camps: the "Ranger" consortium consisting of six companies, including Coolwind, Google, HTC, Samsung, Sony, and Ericsson, Apple, Intel, a consortium consisting of Microsoft, RIM, and EMC, and a consortium led by RPX, a company specializing in patent trading (including Huawei).

Among them, the "Ranger" consortium led by Coolwind, which was the first to make an offer to Nortel, became the "fake horse" bidder with a $1 billion offer, which means that the other bidders must make an offer of at least $1 billion, otherwise the Ranger consortium will bid for these patents.

However, it is clear that both Apple, Intel, and Microsoft-led consortiums have deep pockets and do not care about the so-called $1 billion "threshold" at all.

The auction officially began, and Intel was the first to make an offer of $1.5 billion at 9 a.m.

The consortium led by RPX withdrew from the competition after the first round of bidding, completely intimidated by the formation of other companies participating in the auction. Its president, Amst, said: "It quickly became clear to me that these large companies with a lot of cash flow decided that this auction was strategic for their growth. Obviously, in this case the offer must also be strategic, and they can afford it. ”

After that, Nortel studied the situation and decided to increase the price increase from $5 million to $50 million, so the second round of bidding began. This time, only 3 bidders participated.

Lin Feng personally participated in the auction, according to the agreement he signed with Google, Samsung and other companies in the same camp, the auction will be dominated by Coolwind, supplemented by other companies, the entire consortium will prepare more than $6 billion for the auction, of which Coolwind is responsible for $2.5 billion, Google is willing to pay up to $1.5 billion, HTC, Samsung, Sony, Ericsson and other companies are $500 million, if the bid price exceeds $6 billion, the excess will be paid by Coolwind.

Lin Feng wanted to put other competitors who were not strong enough to put forward the game as soon as possible......

Truth be told, the only competitor in his eyes is Apple.

Therefore, in the second round, Lin Feng increased the price of Intel's quotation by $500 million at one time, quoting a "high price" of $2 billion!

This price directly makes other competitors very uncomfortable......

"The $50 million price increase, Richard Lin's direct $500 million increase! This is to show his determination to obtain these patents...... Cool Wind now has more than $16 billion in cash, backed by the cash reserves of the Fengxing Group, and Google also has $36 billion in cash reserves, and we can't fight hard with them...... "The consortium led by RIM, Microsoft, and EMC is a little shaken.

After all, this time the giant Microsoft is just here to play soy sauce, they have already obtained the authorization of Nortel's patents, no matter who gets the patent, Microsoft's interests are not affected, they just don't want Cool Wind to get it.

Therefore, although Microsoft is also one of the companies with the largest cash reserves in the world, it has not come up with too much money, and it is still a little less financially strong to count on RIM and EMC.

Therefore, in this round, only the consortium where Coolwind is located, Apple, and Intel bid.

By the evening of July 13, after five rounds of bidding, the price had risen to $3 billion...... It can be said that except for Lin Feng, this price was not expected by all the bidders involved!

You know, all the other core assets of Nortel were auctioned off for a total of $3 billion!

For these patent assets, all industry veterans have previously estimated that they are only about $1.5 billion......

After all, everyone is a listed company, and it is a very troublesome thing to acquire some supplementary "patents" for such a large amount of money, which needs to be explained to the board of directors and the general meeting of shareholders.

The only companies that really want to win these patents at all costs are Cool Wind and Apple.

At this time, as Lin Feng expected, that night, Apple merged with Microsoft, RIM, and EMC consortiums! Apple signed an agreement with this consortium to continue bidding under the name and transaction structure of "Rockstar Bidco".

"When someone gives up, you should unite with others. This practice is fairly common in auctions, as you are trying to extend an olive branch to a party who is not capable of it but is still interested in the asset being auctioned. ”

In this case, on the third night, after 6 rounds of bidding, Intel also lost and withdrew from the competition.

Lin Feng warmly invited Intel to join him, in fact, Intel still attaches great importance to mobile communication chips at this time, whether it is Apple or Coolwind, they are important partners of Intel.

In the end, Intel chose the "Ranger" camp led by Cool and Google.

In fact, this is also a major strategic decision for Intel: Intel is ready to start working with Andriod internally, in order to optimize the Android operating system for its processors, Intel hopes to help Intel enter the mobile market by cooperating with Coolwind, so that servers, smartphones and other devices can apply its technology.

As a result, the final auction became a competition between the "Ranger" consortium led by Cool Wind and the "Rockstar Bidco" consortium led by Apple.

At this stage, even Larry Page and the others, who were waiting for news in the rear, were surprised - because this was completely in line with Lin Feng's prediction before!

And the price also came to the $4 billion that shocked everyone!

From this round onwards, it was up to Lin Feng to continue to increase the price by $100 million without caring every time he quoted from Apple......

It seems that the Cool Wind doesn't care about the price at all.

This kind of momentum is inevitable, and Cook (the current COO), who attended on behalf of Apple, was also a little surprised.

And when the price came to $5 billion after 19 rounds, Cook was also a little out of breath, and he dialed Old Joe's phone.

"Steve, the price is now up from the $4.5 billion we had projected to $5 billion, and I don't think Richard Lin is going to give up. Do we need to keep raising prices?"

Not only Apple, but also Microsoft, RIM, EMC, etc. are a little nervous, this price is too scary, the previous few only roughly talked about the strategy and allocation of funds for cooperation, and now it has far exceeded expectations. So they all told Cook that if they continue to raise prices in the future, they will not continue to bear the corresponding share, and Apple needs to bear it alone.

After all, Apple's cash reserves, which are now as high as $70 billion, are the real workhorse.

Old Joe hesitated on the phone, and said viciously, "Continue to increase the price, we can't let Cool Wind get these patents!"

"Okay, Steve. Cook agreed, a little apprehensive, he had always been cautious, and he was so desperate to spend a huge amount of money to contain his opponent, which made him feel a little uneasy.

$5.1 billion, $5.2 billion, $5.3 billion...... , When the price came to $6.2 billion, Cook panicked, $6 billion was already his psychological bottom line!

The "Rockstar Bidco" consortium led by Apple has proposed that it wants more time to think about the next round of offers.

With such a high offer, other companies on the Cool Wind side are also a little uneasy.

Lin Feng said indifferently: "Don't worry, no matter how much the next quotation is, it will all be borne by Coolwind, of course, the corresponding patents need to make some adjustments, but Coolwind will guarantee that all patents will be cross-licensed and co-operated with companies in the consortium in accordance with the previous commitment." ”

Finally, after continuing to resist to $6.5 billion, the consortium led by Apple finally chose to give up.

Even in order to curb Cool Wind and Andriod, the price is so outrageous, you must know that the original valuation of these patents did not exceed $1.5 billion, but now it has increased 5 times!

In the end, in this patent auction known as the "Auction of the Century", the "Ranger" consortium led by Cool Wind and Google bought 6,000 patents of Nortel Networks at a price of $6.5 billion.

However, the auction results are subject to approval by the U.S. and Canadian bankruptcy courts, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and other agencies.

Lin Feng was very satisfied with this result.

Although it was $2 billion higher than the cost of Apple's auction in the previous life, this time Coolwind united Google, HTC, Samsung, Ericsson, Sony and other companies, and these companies bear the cost of $3.5 billion, and Coolwind itself only spent $3 billion, which is only $400 million more than the $2.6 billion spent by Apple in its previous life.

However, Coolwind has obtained exclusive ownership of 4G evolution technology (LTE), the most core of a series of mobile communication fields, as well as a large number of basic network and communication patent licensing.

This will provide a strong defense against patent litigation and infringement in the future, and make up for the biggest shortcomings in the patent side of the Andriod camp!

Since then, it can be said that the Cool Wind has become a trend!