The patent wars rumble on in the technology sector, with Google agreeing to settle litigation with Apple-led patent consortium Rockstar, though terms of the deal were not disclosed in a court filing.
Rockstar counts Apple as an lead investor, along with Microsoft, Sony, Blackberry and Ericsson.
The consortium outbid Google and paid $4.5-billion in 2011 for thousands of former Nortel Network patents as the networking products supplier went bankrupt.
In October last year, Rockstar then sued Google and several handset manufacturers whose phones operate on Google’s Android operating system. Rockstar accused Google of infringing seven Nortel patents, all related to search engine technology.
Rockstar alleged that Google, HTC, Samsung, and other makers of smartphones that use the Google Android operating system violated seven of Nortel’s patents.
All of them have to do with an invention called an “associative search engine” which relates to how Google provides advertisements based on a users’ search terms.
Google and Rockstar have agreed to settle “all matters in controversy between the parties,” according to a filing in an Texas federal court on Monday. However, the document does not say whether Rockstar has also settled with handset makers including Samsung Electronics.
A Google spokesman declined to comment on Thursday, and Rockstar representatives could not immediately be reached. Samsung and Apple spokespeople were also not immediately available.
Earlier in the week, Cisco revealed on an earnings call that it had set aside $188m to deal with a patent dispute with Rockstar.