AOL yesterday said it will sell 800 of its patents and their related applications to Microsoft and grant it a license for its remaining patents for US$1.06 billion in cash.

New York-based AOL Inc said it plans to return some of the sale proceeds to its shareholders.

After the sale, AOL said it will still hold over 300 patents and applications covering a variety of core and strategic technologies, including advertising, search, content generation, social networking, mapping and multimedia.

AOL also received a license to the patents being sold to Microsoft Corp. AOL said the deal with Microsoft resulted from a "robust" auction of the company's patents.

AOL said it will study the best way to distribute a "significant portion" of the sale proceeds to shareholders before the sale closes, which may occur by the end of this year.

Source:shanghaidaily