New York based private equity firm Altitude Capital Partners has sold its portfolio company Saxon Innovations, an intellectual property licensing company, to Norman IP Holdings and RPX.
The sale includes Saxon’s entire portfolio of 180 patents.
Saxon was formed in August 2007 by Altitude to acquire the portfolio from Legerity which was formerly a spin out of AMD.
Prior to the sale, Saxon licensed its portfolio to many mobile handset manufacturers including LG Electronics, HTC, Nokia and Research In Motion.
Rob Kramer (pictured), the managing partner of Altitude Capital Partners, says: "It has been a wonderful experience being part of such a significant and storied intellectual property portfolio. I want to especially thank Saxon chief executive officer Bill Marino for conceiving of and executing the novel approach of demonstrating domestic industry in the International Trade Commission. His entire management team and all of our strategic partners made great contributions to accelerate our realisation of such outstanding returns. We wish Norman IP and RPX continued success with the portfolio."
Norman IP will continue to pursue the strategy developed by Saxon, with Norman IP retaining the Saxon management team and owning ten of the most essential patents. All of the other patents in the portfolio were sold to RPX.
"We look forward to continuing the successful commercialization strategy implemented by Saxon," says Anthony Grillo, who formerly headed up licensing with Saxon and is now in a similar position with Norman IP. "We believe that this transaction and the numerous prior licenses demonstrate the significance of these patents and we look forward to continuing the licensing program in a number of new industries including digital cameras, printers, mobility devices, semiconductors and networking.”
Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel and Pepper Hamilton served as transaction counsel for the Saxon portfolio sale.
