Apple has reached an out-of-court settlement with Interest Technologies this week. The holding company, which is jointly owned by tech giants Sony and Philips, filed a lawsuit against the iPad-maker last year for allegedly infringing on more than two dozen of its patents on distributed computing.
The original suit didn’t layout specifically which patents Intertrust was accusing Apple of infringing, but the company counts digital rights management (or DRM) tech among its inventions. So it’s not too surprising that the two sides notified the court on Tuesday that a settlement had been reached…
AppleInsider has the report:
Attorneys for Apple and Intertrust notified District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on Tuesday that they had reached a settlement agreement and asked that the lawsuit be dismissed. Gonzalez subsequently granted the request, dismissing all claims with prejudice and ordering that each party bear its own fees and costs. Terms of the settlement were not revealed.
Intertrust originally filed suit last March, alleging that nearly every product in Apple’s lineup infringed on at least one of 15 separate Intertrust patents. Those patents, covering security and distributed trusted computing, were said to be in use on the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Mac computers as well as the iTunes, iCloud, and App Store services.
Again, it’s not unexpected that Apple would settle. Intertrust’s patents have been validated several times over the years. The firm won a major victory in 2004 against Microsoft that resulted in $440 million in damages, and it has licensing deals in place with nearly every tech company out there.
Additionally, Tim Cook’s legal team currently has its hands full with part deux of its high-profile Samsung patent trial that started earlier this week. This time around, Apple is seeking in upwards of $2 billion in damages from the Korean handset-maker for infringing on 5 of its software patents.