Apple has shut down one front in what Steven P. Jobs, the company's late chief executive, once described as a thermonuclear legal war against Android, Google's mobile operating system. But a wider truce in the patent battles engulfing the mobile industry is most likely still a long way off, Nick Wingfield reports in Monday's New York Times.
Late Saturday, Apple and HTC, the Taiwanese smartphone maker, announced that they had agreed to dismiss a series of lawsuits filed against each other in a feud that started more than two years ago when Apple accused HTC of improperly copying the iPhone. The companies said their settlement included a 10-year license agreement that grants rights to current and future patents held by both parties.
The companies declined to disclose the financial terms of the deal, though it is widely believed that HTC is paying Apple as part of the agreement. HTC doesn't expect the deal to have “an adverse material impact on the financials o f the company,†Sally Julien, a spokeswoman for HTC, said in a statement.
The deal was the first settlement between Apple and a maker of devices that use Android, an operating system that has rapidly swallowed most of the smartphone market and threatened Apple's position in the mobile business in the process. Other patent lawsuits continue around the globe, including far more significant ones between Apple and Samsung, by far the biggest maker of Android smartphones.
Apple's settlement of an Android-related lawsuit could be interpreted as a sign that Mr. Jobs's successor at Apple, Timothy D. Cook, is eager to end the distraction and risks of patent fights. In the past, Apple executives had been hostile in their remarks about companies they believed were copying their innovations.
“It's the first major sign of a stand-down we've seen in the smartphone wars,†said Christopher V. Carani, a patent lawyer with McAndrews Held & Malloy in Chicago.
Mr. Carani, though, cautioned against reading the HTC settlement too deeply as a sign that Apple would settle its legal fight with Samsung, a dispute that he believes involves more important patents.
