Apple will pay $5 million to settle a patent lawsuit with the Taiwan-based firm Elan, a report said Thursday. According to its website, Elan focuses on the research and development of integrated circuits and touchpad module solutions. Concluding an ongoing spat, the two companies have now agreed on a patent sharing relationship, according to Reuters. Elan originally filed a suit against Apple in 2009 alleging that Apple was infringing on two patents related to multitouch technology. Apple countersued in the U...

AT&T has settled a patent lawsuit with TiVo in which it will pay the DVR vendor $215 million through June 2018, including an initial payment of $51 million. AT&T will also pay “incremental recurring per subscriber monthly license fees” to TiVo through July 2018 if its subscriber base surpasses a certain level, TiVo said in a statement Wednesday. AT&T and TiVo were locked in a patent battle after AT&T began to market its own digital video recorder using a technology patented by TiVo...

Sony and LG have reached an agreement over a patent battle that involved several consumer electronics devices including televisions, the PlayStation 3 and phones, Reuters reported on Thursday. The two companies have agreed to enter a cross-licensing deal. “LG and Sony recently agreed to drop patent infringement lawsuits against each other,” an LG spokeswoman confirmed. Sony originally filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission in an attempt to block the sale of several LG phone...

Samsung on Monday denied Apple attorney Harold McElhinny’s claim that the two companies are currently holding high-level talks in an attempt to settle ongoing patent disputes. U.S. district judge Lucy Koh told the companies last week to meet and discuss possible amicable solutions to their disputes. McElhinny responded by saying executives from the two companies are “meeting and talking,” but Samsung is singing a different tune. “We are unaware of any meetings or discussions between th...

Executives at Apple and Samsung are attempting to reconcile their differences and settle the numerous patent disputes each company has filed recently, FierceWireless reports. Despite their partnership, the two companies are locked in an ongoing battle over patents that has drawn tremendous media attention. Apple claims that various recent Samsung products such as the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Nexus S are copycat devices that make obvious use of Apple IP without license to do so. Samsung responded by filing a se...

Deutsche Bank analyst Kai Korschelt on Tuesday estimated that Nokia stands to make a pretty penny off of royalty payments from Apple moving forward. Nokia announced early on Tuesday that it had reached an agreement with Apple regarding a series of patent disputes filed by each company over the past few years. Based on recent settlements tied to similar cases in the industry, Korschelt estimates that Apple will give Nokia a $608 million lump-sum payment up front. Following that initial payment, Apple will l...

On Tuesday Nokia announced that it has reached an agreement with Apple that “will result in settlement of all patent litigation between the companies,” and that both firms will withdraw all complaints against one another from the U.S. International Trade Commission. The two firms have been fighting over patents for the past few years, filing counter suit after counter suit. The battle was thought to have had some closure when the U.S. ITC ruled that Apple did not infringe on Nokia’s patents,...

According to a report by Citi analyst Walter Pritchard, Microsoft may be making more money off Google’s Android operating system than it makes off its own Windows Phone platform — five times more, in fact. Pritchard states that as a result of a patent settlement, HTC is required to pay Microsoft $5 for every Android phone sold. Analyst Horace Dediu estimates that HTC has sold 30 million Android smartphones to date, which adds up to $150 million in the bank for Microsoft. Dediu notes that Microsoft h...

According to a report filed by The Wall Street Journal, peer-to-peer networking site LimeWire and several major record labels may be working on an out-of-court settlement in a copyright infringement case from 2006. “Lawyers for several major record labels have held at least three settlement conferences with representatives of a file-sharing service that they sued for copyright infringement, according to a federal court docket entry, indicating that the two sides may reach an agreement on a financial p...

Sprint, which owns the majority stake of Clearwire, has agreed to pay the company at least $1 billion through 2012 for fees associated with the use of its 4G WiMAX network. Sprint and Clearwire entered arbitration late last year after Sprint argued that it shouldn’t have to pay a fee for 4G handsets that exist where Clearwire’s 4G WiMAX network isn’t available. Sprint charges its customers an extra $10 monthly for the option to run on 4G networks and Clearwire charges an estimated $4.46 per ...

In a joint statement issued on Tuesday, Motorola Solutions and Huawei have announced an agreement to settle all pending litigation between the two companies. Motorola filed a suit against Huawei in July 2010 alleging theft of trade secrets, and Huawei responded in January of this year with a suit alleging Motorola was illegally transferring Huawei’s intellectual property to Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN). Motorola solutions has now agreed to withdraw all claims related to Motorola v. Lemko, et al., and Hu...

Following a very, very rocky start for Google’s latest social networking effort, Google Buzz, the Internet giant has settled a class action lawsuit related to the service. When Buzz launched earlier this year, Google found itself at the center of a media frenzy. The company decided it would forgo an opt-in process and share users’ locations with each Google account holder in their address books by default. The decision turned out to be a PR nightmare — and now it carries a financial burden with ...

Well, we might as well close the loop on this one. Last month, we told you how former HP CEO Mark Hurd was ousted by HP, complimented by Larry Ellison, and then hired by Oracle. We also told you how the Oracle hiring prompted a lawsuit from Mr. Hurd’s former employer. Now, the New York Times is reporting that the two sides have reached an agreement on the embattled executive’s future. In exchange for dropping the lawsuit, Hurd will forfeit nearly half of the $28 million compensation package ...

A California appeals court has ruled that Verizon Wireless is to pay some 175,000 customers current and former customers $21 million as a settlement in a class action lawsuit over early termination fees. The class action suit was filed in California on the behalf of customers who were upset that Verizon asked they pay a flat ETF of $175 regardless of how many months were left on their contract. Each customer is expected to receive $87.50 as a result of the ruling. Too bad history is bound to repeat itself now...