Apple to pay $2.6bn of the $4.5bn bill for Nortel's patents

Apple has confirmed that it will cover the lion's share of the acquisition cost for Nortel's patent portfolio, which it bought as part of the Rockstar consortium alongside RIM, Microsoft and Sony.

Cupertino will pay $2.6bn towards the acquisition, more than half of the $4.5bn purchase price, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The patents cover a range of areas which will be useful to the iPhone maker, including wireless, LTE, networking, optical, service provider and semiconductor technologies.

It is unclear how the consortium will split the assets, but it looks like Apple has put itself in prime position to secure the best properties.

Florian Mueller, a software patents expert, told V3 that the vendors are likely to have made a deal before the bid was secured.

"A rough plan for the divvying-up of the relevant patents should always be put in place beforehand, especially in this case as it was such as huge transaction," he added.

Apple was forced to pay Nokia around €420m as part of a patent settlement last month, and is likely to have to make quarterly licensing payments of around €95m, so it is unsurprising that Apple is trying to bolster its portfolio of technology patents to avoid having to pay others in the future.

It also gives the firm yet more leverage over rival Google and its Android platform which threatens to pose a serious challenge to iOS.