BlackBerry-Maker RIM, Motorola Agree to End All Ongoing Global Litigation

Handset-makers Research In Motion (RIM) and Motorola today announced that they have come to an agreement that will end all legal action between the two companies.

RIM and Motorola have exchanged legal blows multiple times over the past few years, most recently when Motorola sued RIM in early 2010 for allegedly employing Motorola technology after a licensing-period expired.

As part of the settlement, RIM will shell out an “up-front payment and ongoing royalties” to Motorola, though additional details of the deal remain confidential.

From the related press release:

“Motorola and RIM will benefit from a long-term, intellectual property cross-licensing arrangement involving the parties receiving cross-licenses of various patent rights, including patent rights relating to certain industry standards and certain technologies, such as 2G, 3G, 4G, 802.11 and wireless email . In addition, the parties will transfer certain patents to each other.”

RIM’s no stranger to patent-related lawsuits; on the contrary, the company has been entangled in handfuls of patent-suits over the past few years, including the high-profile NTP litigation, which threatened to shut down BlackBerry service in the United States in 2006, and the BlackBerry-maker’s court battles with tech-firm Visto.

RIM also recently settled another separate patent-suit with Prism Technologies, and legal action between it and Kodak is still ongoing, according to TechCrunch, but at least the BlackBerry-maker can now put its legal dealings with Motorola to bed.

AS

via TechCrunch