Industry committee  I don't really know why. All I know is that it benefited the stalking horse bidder.

Industry committee  It appeared at first they didn't understand the implications of some of the things they were declaring to us. What's important here is that they did understand what we were talking about. We made it very clear to them on several occasions the value of what we were interested in and why we were interested, what the value was of what we were interested in.

Industry committee  Yes, that dramatically reduced the value of the LTE assets to us.

Industry committee  At this point, based on the information we have--that is public--those assets have very limited value to us going forward.

Industry committee  Yes.

Industry committee  Much of this is in our brief. It's a very complex issue and it's very detailed in there. What I can tell you is that there are many aspects of this. One is that being involved in the standards process is absolutely critical for future success in a technology--and it's really important for Canada to be involved in that.

Industry committee  The first thing that's important here is that we were given very little time. Once we learned that the rights to the assets were given away with such broad terms, we had very little time to react. Nortel knew what we were interested in, and they were very interested in our acquiring those things.

Industry committee  No, what we're saying is that during this entire process Nortel knew exactly what it was we were interested in and in fact, on several occasions, both before and after the bankruptcy announcement and proceedings, came very close to consummating a deal—so close that we were exchanging e-mails about a press release within a matter of days.

Industry committee  There are two or three questions there. The first thing I'd like to say is that investing in R and D is absolutely critical to the success of the high-tech industry, so it shouldn't surprise people when I mention that last year we invested $700 million in R and D. That's the first thing that's important.

Industry committee  In the end, that was what we offered.

Industry committee  By licensing broad rights to the intellectual property assets and providing broad sub-licensing rights, the best way to describe it is if you found a house that met all your needs and you were very interested in it and started working on an agreement of purchase and sale, and in the final hour you discovered that the owner had given a lifetime lease to another party and then had given them sublet licence for that property.

Industry committee  We investigated that, but we were advised by our legal counsel that we wouldn't be successful in the U.S. under the terms that were already put in place. We felt that we were snookered.

Industry committee  My understanding is that it was Nortel's U.S. counsel.

Industry committee  That's a good question. In my experience with RIM and other organizations that I've cooperated with in the past, much of the R and D and much of the innovation happens near their headquarters or in their country of origin, mainly because there's a historical condition there. There's also, in many cases, financial advantages to that.

Industry committee  We've clearly, publicly, told you our belief of the value of those assets, based on our public bid. I would find it hard to believe that all those assets and all the rights to the other assets—and that's the key—are only worth $150 million.