Google reaches agreement with Apple and Microsoft-owned Rockstar over patent litigation

Google Inc and patent consortium Rockstar, jointly owned by Apple, Microsoft and other IT giants, have agreed to settle litigation, but the court filing made public this week did not disclose the terms of the deal.

Rockstar outbid Google paying $4.5 billion in 2011 for thousands of former bankrupt networking equipment supplier Nortel Network Corp (See: Apple, Microsoft, Sony, RIM bag Nortel patents for $4.5 bn).

In October last year Rockstar took Google and several handset manufacturers whose phones operated on Google's Android operating system, to court. Google was accused of infringing seven Nortel patents, all related to search engine technology.

According to a filing in a Texas federal court on Monday, Google and Rockstar had agreed to settle "all matters in controversy between the parties.''

The document however makes no mention of whether Rockstar had also settled with handset makers including Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

According to the court filing, Google and Rockstar had reached a term sheet which would be "reduced to a definitive agreement" over the next few weeks.

Rockstar, a non-manufacturing, patent-holding entity was formed several years ago and in 2011, the consortium successfully outbid Google and others for wireless and cellphone patents from Nortel's intellectual property portfolio after which it proceeded to launch IP infringement lawsuits against a number of companies.

In addition to Apple and Microsoft, BlackBerry, Ericsson, and Sony are part also of the Rockstar joint venture.

The bone of contention between Google and Rockstar was the internet giant's Android mobile operating system.

According to the lawsuit filed last year, Google violated seven patents related to technology that matched search terms with relevant advertising.

Included under the Nortel portfolio are IP related to wireless, wireless 4G, data networking, optical, voice, internet, service provider and semiconductor technologies.

Google, earlier this year, seemed ready to fight Rockstar in court, and had even filed a counter-suit which claimed that the consortium had "placed a cloud" over Android operating system by allegedly harassing makers of Android phones and other Google partners like Facebook and LinkedIn.

The search company had in April referred to entities like Rockstar as "patent trolls" in an appeal to the Federal Trade Commission to curb what Matthew Bye, Google's senior competition counsel, called "patent privateering."