Red Hat Had Shopping Spree Before Acquisition

Red Hat‘s acquisition by IBM  was announced in 2018 and wrapped up earlier this year. The top patent holder in the Edge Computing sector and market share in hybrid cloud computing, it was assumed that IP was a major part of the $34 billion IBM paid for the company. In total, Red Hat currently has over 2500 issued patents to its name. Interestingly enough, in a recent interview with Patrick McBride, Red Hat’s senior director of intellectual property, it was revealed that Red Hat went on a major patent buying spree prior to the acquisition. This included patents from AT&T, Avaya, Huawei, and more. Some of this buying was even completed after the deal was announced, including four patents from Wiretap Ventures in May 2019.