Apple and Google who have been at each other’s throats about several patent rows for a long time, have now decided to end the war. It’s good news for Lenovo too since Google is in the process of handing over Motorola Mobility which was also embroiled in the battle of the two tech giants.
Google and Apple have not planned to sign any cross licensing deal for exchange of technology even though they’ve decided to drop lawsuits filed against patent infringement both ways. Apparently, the two companies have only agreed to stop heckling each other because of a common kind of enemy – patent trolls.
Patents trolls are entities or people who attempt to enforce patent rights against ‘infringing parties’ in order to earn licensing fees even though they don’t manufacture products or offer services based on the concerned patents. The Apple-Google wars span lawsuits and counter-suits in the US as also International Trade Commission actions and legal spats in Germany.
The newly announced agreement to drop disagreements over patents will result in 20 pending actions in the US and Germany being dismissed. But this does not mean that Apple will stop bombarding other manufacturers of Android devices with lawsuits. Just this month, Samsung was forced to cough up $119 million to the iPhone maker with regards to a few patents the former was found guilty of violating.
Google emerged clean out of that battle and now it has managed to slip out of more patent legal rows. Re/code hints that Apple has successfully fielded accusations with regards to standards-essential patents in the past. At the same time, this does not explain why the cases against Mountain View were dropped unless patent trolls is the concrete answer.