Apple settles with major patent holder at 1:00am the night before trial

A large patent-holding company called Unwired Planet reached a settlement with Apple at 1:00am on Monday, just hours before a jury trial was set to start in San Francisco. A jury had already been selected but was dismissed on Monday morning after the parties' lawyers told US District Judge Vincent Chhabria about their settlement.

Unwired Planet is the patent-holding remains of early mobile company Openwave, which acquired several hundred US patents from Ericsson in early 2013, with Ericsson getting 20 percent of any patent settlements. Later that year, Unwired Planet sued Apple.

In 2015, Judge Chhabria ruled that Apple didn't infringe the four patents at issue in the case. Chhabria's ruling was mostly overturned on appeal (PDF) last July, leading to the jury trial that was set to start yesterday.

In addition to suing Apple, Unwired Planet also sued Google, Microsoft, and Square in the US. The company also took the unusual step of suing Google, Samsung, and Huawei in London, a nontraditional venue for non-practicing entity lawsuits. Unwired Planet's stock jumped 20 percent after it beat Samsung and Huawei in the UK.

Openwave was a key player in creating early mobile browsers. By 2001, it dominated the market, with 97 percent of US mobile phones using some type of Openwave browser, a success recounted in Unwired Planet's original complaint (PDF) against Apple. "By July 2001 Openwave had increased in size to approximately 2,200 employees worldwide, and the company earned revenues of over $465 million for fiscal year 2001," Unwired's lawyers note.

After the London lawsuit was filed, Unwired Planet's general counsel Noah Mesel disputed the idea his company was a "patent troll" in an interview with Bloomberg. "You can call us anything you like," Mesel said. "We happen to be at the point in our business cycle where what’s left is a patent portfolio."

Law360, which first reported the settlement, said that Unwired Planet was seeking $33 million in royalties.

Unwired Planet, which was publicly traded, spun off its patent business last year and changed its name to Great Elm Capital Group. The company's SEC filings show that Microsoft settled Unwired's claims for a one-time payment $8.75 million in October.