Apple is beefing up its patent portfolio with the recent transfer of over 1,000 patents from Rockstar Consortium. The patent and patent application transfer was first reported by Yonhap News and confirmed by patent transfer records in the US Patent and Trademark Office database.

Apple is a member of Rockstar Bidco, which outbid Google for a collection of 4,000 patents from Nortel. Apple along with Microsoft, Sony, Ericsson, EMC and RIM bid US$4.5 billion for the patent portfolio in July 2011. Apple provided $2.6 billion to buy the patents and patent applications. According to a report in Business Insider, Apple, Microsoft and Rockstar declined to comment on the news report.

[Via Business Insider]