Apple and Google agree to dismiss all direct legal action between themselves
By Alex Wilhelm from Techcrunch
Late today, Apple and Google announced that they have agreed to dismiss direct lawsuits aimed at one another, and will work together to help push patent reform forward.
It’s a huge change for the two companies, which compete on everything from music sales, to productivity tools, to cloud storage, to mobile app distribution, and so forth. According to a source speaking to GigaOm, about 20 lawsuits will go dark.
Here’s the statement:
Apple and Google have agreed to dismiss all the current lawsuits that exist directly between the two companies. Apple and Google have also agreed to work together in some areas of patent reform. The agreement does not include a cross license
There is narrowness implicit to the agreement, given that the companies can still pursue legal action that could harm their core businesses. Apple could sue firms that work with Google, or with Google products, and the like.
Given that surface area of their competition, the détente is notable. Technology patent wars are incredibly common. Apple and Samsung’s recent courtroom battle ended with a nine-figure payment awarded from the latter to the former. The agreement doesn’t appear to ban future litigation, so this is hardly a disarmament — instead, it is a deescalation of current legal action that the firms appear more than willing to leave behind.
If was a gambling man, I’d wager we don’t see much activity of this sort moving forward. And the anti-trust hairs on the back of my neck are prickling ever so slightly.
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Related story:
Apple reaches a major patent truce with Google… but it’s still going to keep suing Samsung
By Brad Reed From brg
The great mobile patent wars are finally coming to an end, at least as far as battles between Google and Apple are concerned.
Per The Wall Street Journal, the two companies announced on Friday night that they were dropping all remaining patent suits that they have against one another and will instead work to push for reforms in United States patent law.
The new patent truce doesn’t mean the two companies will start licensing one another’s patents, however, and Apple says that the truce won’t change anything when it comes to its ongoing lawsuits against Samsung even though its last effort at squeezing money from the Korean smartphone titan was not nearly as successful as it had hoped.
Even so, the mutual disarmament between Apple and Google seems to indicate that the “holy war” that Steve Jobs wanted to wage against Google has now come to an end.
