Canadian patent company Wi-Lan Inc on Wednesday extended the deadline for its $480-million hostile bid to acquire Mosaid Technologies Inc. by two weeks.
Wi-Lan made the all-cash, $38-a-share offer for its fellow Canadian patent licensing company on Aug. 17. It extended the deadline for the offer to 5 p.m. on October 14.
Mosaid shares closed down 0.58 per cent at $37.66 a share.
Mosaid has said the offer, 20 per cent more than its trading price the day before Wi-Lan made its offer, is too low. It said it was in talks with other potential suitors in an effort to fend off the bid.
It has also adopted a poison pill, or hostile takeover defense, which Wi-Lan said on Wednesday it was challenging before the Ontario Securities Commission, Canada's main financial regulator.
It also attached a new condition to the deal: that the terms of Mosaid's recent agreement to acquire some 2,000 wireless patents with Nokia and Microsoft must not have a negative material affect on the company.
Wi-Lan also expressed concerns about Mosaid's sale this month of five non-strategic patent families.
Wi-Lan said on Wednesday the financial terms of its offer remained the same.
Mosaid has rejected the bid partly on grounds that it fails to take into account the value added by its acquisition of the Nokia and Google patents.
"That shareholder opposition might be overcome by an increased bid or perhaps not," said Bank of Montreal analyst Brian Piccioni, who does not expect a rival bidder to emerge.
"There are financial constraints on what Wi-Lan can do and maybe that's a consideration as well."
Wi-Lan wants to buy Mosaid to help boost its patent arsenal and make it easier to extract lucrative licensing deals from technology giants in areas ranging from wireless to semiconductors.
Both companies make money by developing and licensing intellectual property for the communications and consumer electronics markets, where tech majors pay increasingly huge sums for patents to use as weapons in litigation and cross-licensing.