Icahn wants Motorola to sell its wireless patent portfolio

The Nortel patent sale re-enforced the concept of a strategic premium value for a patent portfolio. Now the thought is expanding.
Is this Selden re-visited?

From an article in the New York Times:

The auction of some 6,000 patents from the bankrupt Nortel in late June lighted the fuse. Google’s stalking-horse bid set a floor price of $900 million. When the gavel came down, a group including Apple and Microsoft, as well as Ericsson, Research in Motion and others, walked off with the portfolio for an unexpected $4.5 billion.

Since then, InterDigital, an owner of wireless intellectual property, put itself up for sale. Carl Icahn, the 75-year-old billionaire, has pressured Motorola Mobility to sell its patent portfolio. And Google recently bought over 1,000 patents from I.B.M. covering multiple areas of technology to bolster its relatively weak war chest.

The valuation calculus has quickly changed. Such patents, which cover everything from app icons to address books, could very well dictate the future of the rapidly growing smartphone market. Though once appraised almost exclusively based on their royalty streams, mobile-related patents now command healthy strategic premiums.