Motorola and Metrologic lay down arms
Season of goodwill to all IT companies
Posted in Mobile, 2nd January 2008 11:34 GMT
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Motorola and Metrologic have settled a half-decade long patent dispute, which the comms giant inherited when it bought Symbol Technologies almost a year ago.
Metrologic licensed various barcode technologies from Symbol back in 1996, but by 2002 had unilaterally decided it no longer needed to pay royalties, on the basis that the products had moved on and were no longer derivative.
Symbol objected to Metrologic's decision not to pay them royalties any more, and sued over an agreement that Metrologic claimed at the time was worth "under $500,000".
Motorola paid around £2bn for Symbol Technologies in January last year, and the suit has been rumbling on ever since.
The details of this agreement are confidential, but include cross-licensing of technologies owned by both companies, rather than any cash changing hands. ®


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