The possible acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent of France by Finland-based Nokia would bring together complementary patent portfolios and increase their scale against larger global competitors, analysts said Tuesday.

Nokia’s patents primarily cover technology used for communications between smartphones and cell towers equipped with base stations that are provisioned with routers and other gear. Meanwhile, Alcatel-Lucent’s patents are more concentrated on communications beyond the base stations to the backhaul, which is often over fiber optic cable.

“While the two companies have adjacent technologies, there is limited overlap in them, so this results in a good combined portfolio with the whole of the telecom technology stack,” said Aditya Awasthi, director of client services at Lexinnova, a patent analytics company based in Houston.

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