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Apple Settles Legal Dispute With Nokia
Apple and Nokia settled a legal dispute on Tuesday over the right of the iPhone maker to use patents and other intellectual property owned by the Finnish telecommunications company.
The move comes less than six months after Apple said that it would no longer pay to use Nokia’s patents, many of which are built into Apple’s suite of products, accusing the Finnish company of extortion.
In response, Nokia filed lawsuits in 11 countries, including Germany and the United States, aiming to defend its intellectual property. Nokia said that Apple should pay for technology used in smartphones, tablets and other devices.
That tug of war, however, is now over.
On Tuesday, the companies said that they had settled all of the lawsuits, and that they had signed a new patent agreement under which Apple will start paying royalties to Nokia from the second quarter of 2017. The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the agreement.
In a sign that they had buried the hatchet, Apple and Nokia also announced that they had signed new business agreements: Apple will begin stocking some of Nokia’s digital health products in its stores, and the Finnish company will provide some of its mobile network infrastructure products and services to the American company.
“We are pleased with this resolution of our dispute and we look forward to expanding our business relationship with Nokia,” Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer, said in a statement.
Investors welcomed the news, pushing Nokia’s stock price up more than 6 percent in morning trading in Helsinki, Finland, on Tuesday.
The legal battle between Apple and Nokia had highlighted the continuing role that the Finnish company — once the world’s largest seller of mobile phones — has in the industry, despite its devices having been outmuscled by those of Apple and Samsung.
Like Ericsson, another European technology company that owns multiple patents that are widely used in Android and Apple phones, Nokia avidly guards its intellectual property, which has become a mainstay of the company’s annual revenue.
Separately, Apple continues to face a battle with Qualcomm, an American microprocessing giant, which has accused it of failing to pay billions of dollars in licensing fees. Apple denies any wrongdoing.
Follow Mark Scott on Twitter @markscott82.
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