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Apple, WiLAN settle patent disputes with license agreement – Metro US

Apple, WiLAN settle patent disputes with license agreement

FILE PHOTO: The Apple Inc. logo is seen in the
FILE PHOTO: The Apple Inc. logo is seen in the lobby of New York City’s flagship Apple store

(Reuters) -Canadian patent-licensing company WiLAN Inc said Tuesday that it has signed a new license agreement with Apple Inc related to wireless technology, resolving a patent fight between the companies just weeks after Apple won an appeal of an $85 million court win for WiLAN.

WiLAN’s parent company Quarterhill Inc said the agreement settles all court cases between WiLAN, its subsidiary Polaris, and Apple in the United States, Canada and Germany.

Specific terms of the agreement were not disclosed, and the companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Apple sued WiLAN in 2014, seeking a ruling that it did not infringe patents related to allocating bandwidth in a wireless network. WiLAN claimed that iPhone 5 and 6 models infringed by using the LTE wireless standard.

Apple convinced a U.S. appeals court in Washington, D.C., in February to reject the $85 million jury verdict against the iPhone maker because of problems with WiLAN’s expert testimony.

The decision was the second time the court had overturned a multi-million dollar verdict for WiLAN in the dispute, after it rejected a $145 million jury win in 2018.

WiLAN’s primary business is buying patents in fields including wireless communications, computer chips and the automotive industry and licensing the technology to companies.

(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru, Blake Brittain in Washington, D.C.; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Andrea Ricci)