Samsung made an unsolicited $5.85 billion dollar offer to purchase SanDisk Corporation – a maker of flash memory cards and digital music players. The offer which amounts to $26 dollars a share, was made to SanDisk in August and was just revealed to investors Tuesday afternoon. The offer was more than 90 percent over the closing price of SanDisk (which closed at $15.04 a share).

SanDisk’s founder and chief executive, Eli Harari, rejected Samsung’s offer citing that the offer “significantly” undervalued the company.

So why would Samsung want SanDisk? In a word.. (or rather two words), “intellectual property”. Samsung apparently pays SanDisk about $440 million dollars a year for patent licenses. With SanDisk’s stock price suffering, it only made sense for Samsung to try and purchase SanDisk outright.

You can read more about this over at the New York Times.

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