After a long and hard fought battle between two major tech companies, the court battles between Apple and the once Google owned Motorola Mobility are finally over as both parties decided to settle in court, effectively ending the litigation process for a lawsuit that has been going on for quite some time over the use of technology Apple claimed ownership of in some of Motorola’s handsets. In addition to settling, it appears that Apple and Google have also agreed to work together as a team in certain areas of patent reform. This could potentially make for a huge change in technology related patent disputes if companies like Apple are willing to settle over accused infringement.
While the most famous disputes involving Apple usually revolve around Samsung and their copied misuse of some of Apple’s software and designs, Apple over the past three to five years has been on a rampage to “destroy Android” as a whole any way it could, much of the time with Google having to attempt to step in and protect it’s platform. Apple has long been accusing Google and Android for stealing certain aspects of the iOS designs and features and if locking up Google in litigation was the only way it could try and seek justice for what they thought was copyright, so be it.
Since Google had largely kept most of the patents previously belonging to Motorola before their buyout and eventual sale to Lenovo, the remainder of the battles between Apple and Motorola were really between Apple and Google. The cases between Apple and Motorola were dismissed in 2012 by Judge Richard Posner for lack of evidence to support their cases, but that wasn’t the end for Apple as they continued to fight and were eventually given another chance to seek a win in court last month. At this point in time there isn’t any mention of what it took for Apple and Google to settle their differences over the alleged patent infringements, either way this means both companies can finally get back to innovating and developing more and better products and devices rather than waste their time suing one another.