Google, Rockstar settle Nortel patent litigation suit

Google and patent consortium Rockstar – which includes Apple as an investor – have agreed to settle a patent litigation suit, according to a court filing.

The settlement terms were not disclosed, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported.

In 2011, Rockstar paid $4.5bn (£2.9bn) for thousands of former Nortel Network Corporation patents.

Rockstar sued Google and others last year for infringing those patents in its Android operating system.

Rockstar alleged that Google, HTC, Samsung, and other makers of smartphones that use the Google Android operating system violated seven of Nortel’s patents.

All of them have to do with an invention called an “associative search engine” which relates to how Google provides advertisements based on a users’ search terms.

In addition to Apple, Rockstar’s investors are BlackBerry, Ericsson, Microsoft, and Sony.

In the court filing with an eastern Texas judge, Rockstar and Google report that they signed a term sheet on 12 November that essentially settles all matters relating to the suit.

Earlier in the week, Cisco revealed on an earnings call that it had set aside $188m to deal with a patent dispute with Rockstar.