Apple and Nokia end their patent fight

A litigation brawl between Nokia and Apple over intellectual property has ended just five months after it started.

The companies said today they have settled all outstanding litigation and agreed to a patent license. While exact financial terms are confidential, Apple will be making an up-front cash payment to Nokia, followed by additional payments over the course of the agreement.

"This is a meaningful agreement between Nokia and Apple," Maria Varsellona, Chief Legal Officer at Nokia, said in a statement. "It moves our relationship with Apple from being adversaries in court to business partners working for the benefit of our customers."

"We are pleased with this resolution of our dispute and we look forward to expanding our business relationship with Nokia," said Jeff Williams, Apple's chief operating officer.

Legal hostilities between the two companies broke out in December. Apple filed an antitrust lawsuit (PDF) against Nokia, accusing the company of moving "massive numbers of patents" to patent assertion entities—known pejoratively as "patent trolls"—like Acacia Research. Nokia then reached deals with "each of its PAE co-conspirators" to separately enforce a diffused patent portfolio.

Nokia counter-attacked the following day by accusing Apple of infringing fully 32 of its smartphone patents. According to Nokia, every version of the iPhone, from the iPhone 7 all the way back to the 3GS, infringed Nokia patents.

All that has been laid to rest now. However, today's statement doesn't say what will happen to those lawsuits that were initiated by PAEs holding Nokia patents. In April, Cellular Communications Equipment, LLC, a unit of Acacia, sued Apple, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile.