Ina Fried

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Apple to Pay Nokia To Settle Patent Spat

Nokia announced late on Monday that Apple will pay the Finnish cell phone maker an undisclosed amount as well as ongoing royalties to settle the long-running patent spat between the two companies.

The deal will settle all patent litigation between the two companies, Nokia said, and both companies will withdraw their complaints before the International Trade Commission. Specific terms weren’t disclosed.

“We are very pleased to have Apple join the growing number of Nokia licensees,” Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said in a statement. “This settlement demonstrates Nokia’s industry leading patent portfolio and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market.”

Although Nokia didn’t say how much Apple will pay in either royalties or in its one-time payment, Nokia did say the settlement should improve the quarterly outlook the company gave as part of its May 31 earnings warning.

As part of the deal, the two sides are licensing some, but not all of each other’s patents. Nokia first sued Apple in 2009 over fundamental cellphone technology patents and the two companies have since been filing legal actions against one another in legal venues across the globe.

Apple confirmed the settlement in a statement to AllThingsD.

“Apple and Nokia have agreed to drop all of our current lawsuits and enter into a license covering some of each others’ patents, but not the majority of the innovations that make the iPhone unique,” the company said. “We’re glad to put this behind us and get back to focusing on our respective businesses.”

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The problem with the Billionaire Savior phase of the newspaper collapse has always been that billionaires don’t tend to like the kind of authority-questioning journalism that upsets the status quo.

— Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review about the promise of Pierre Omidyar’s new media venture with Glenn Greenwald