Yahoo is selling its search technology patent

Yahoo is planning to sell approximately 3,000 patents, including its proprietary search technology, in a deal that could bring in an additional $1 billion to the company, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The other patents include advertising and cloud technology and 2,659 of these were assigned in April to a Yahoo subsidiary called Excalibur ahead of the sale.The company has hired investment bank Black Stone IP to handle the sell-off and a source told WSJ that Yahoo will take bids until mid-June.

Yahoo is, however, retaining a significant number of patents and pending applications in the U.S. and abroad that are related to its core Internet business. These include over 500 patents issued in the U.S., over 600 pending applications in the U.S. and about 1,000 additional foreign equivalents that are both pending and issued.

During an earnings call for its fourth quarter 2015 results, Yahoo had said that it had begun to explore divesting non-strategic assets of value this year, including non-core patents and real estate, for between $1 billion and $3 billion in cash.

The report comes a day after the second-round deadline for Yahoo's core internet business. The WSJ had reported on Monday that Verizon has placed a $3 billion bid for Yahoo's core business, which includes its search and email services.

The estimated value of Yahoo's core business varies as per different analysts. Wall Street analysts believe it should be in the range of $4 billion to $8 billion, but that's only if you include Yahoo's real-estate and licensing deals.

On the other hand, SunTrust's research analyst Bob Peck wrote in a report on Tuesday that Yahoo's IP patents should be worth at least $1.5 billion while a recent report by the New York Post said it could be worth $4 billion in total.

Many companies including Verizon, AT&T, and a number of private equity firms have recently shown interest in buying Yahoo's core business.