The patent-holding consortium Rockstar — which includes Apple among its members, alongside Microsoft, BlackBerry and others — has reached a settlement with Google.
In a lawsuit filed last October, Rockstar alleged that Google was infringing on 7 different search-related patents, which had been acquired by Rockstar in 2011 following the bankruptcy of networking products supplier Nortel.
Rockstar outbid Google to acquire the patents, for which it paid $4.5 billion. Some reports put Apple’s contribution as high as $2.6 billion.
Although you may not have heard of Nortel, you’re almost certainly familiar with what it does; having started out in the nineteenth century as an arm of the Bell Telephone Company of Canada, and developing numerous innovative telecommunications and networking solutions since then.
As part the settlement, a court filing says that Google and Rockstar have agreed to settle “all matters in controversy between the parties,” although it does not mention whether the settlement also applies to Samsung — which was another party named in the case.
It is expected that Google and Rockstar will reach a “definitive agreement” over the next few weeks.
Earlier this year, Apple and Google agreed to a truce in their holy patent war, with both companies agreeing to drop all then-current patent lawsuits against each other. However, this did not include the lawsuit between Rockstar and Google, on the basis that Apple formed just one part of the former consortium — albeit a significant one.
