Google, Rockstar agree to settle patent litigation: filing

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Google Inc has agreed to settle litigation with patent consortium Rockstar, though terms of the deal were not disclosed in a court filing made public this week.

Rockstar, which counts Apple Inc as an investor, outbid Google and paid $4.5 billion in 2011 for thousands of former Nortel Network Corp patents as the networking products supplier went bankrupt.

In October last year, Rockstar sued Google and several handset manufacturers whose phones operate on Google’s Android operating system. Rockstar accused Google of infringing seven Nortel patents, all related to search engine technology.

Google and Rockstar have agreed to settle “all matters in controversy between the parties, ” according to a filing in an Texas federal court on Monday. However, the document does not say whether Rockstar has also settled with handset makers including Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

A Google spokesman declined to comment on Thursday, and Rockstar representatives could not immediately be reached. Samsung and Apple spokespeople were also not immediately available.

Google and Rockstar have reached a term sheet, which will be “reduced to a definitive agreement” over the next few weeks, the court filing said.

On that same day, Rockstar sued several handset makers over a different batch of patents. Google then asked a California judge to rule that devices using the Android platform had not infringed the patents cited by Rockstar against the handset makers.

Google succeeded in halting the Texas proceedings against the handset makers while its California case plays out. Earlier this month Cisco said it had signed a term sheet with Rockstar and would take a $188 million charge related to that agreement.