Microsoft and Samsung settle over royalties

 9545A court case between Microsoft and Samsung over patent royalties appears to have sorted itself out.

Microsoft  sued Samsung last year claiming the spy TV maker had breached a collaboration agreement by initially refusing to make royalty payments.

This was soon after Microsoft bought Nokia’s handset business in September 2013.

The lawsuit claimed Samsung still owed $6.9 million in interest on more than $1 billion in patent royalties it delayed paying. Samsung has countered that the Nokia acquisition violated its 2011 collaboration deal with Microsoft.

Microsoft has not said how much Samsung is paying it. In 2011, a technology analyst at Citigroup estimated that Microsoft was getting $5 per Android handset sold by phone maker HTC under a patent agreement, and that Microsoft was looking for up to $12.50 per phone from other handset makers it had yet to come to an agreement with.

Microsoft denied this figure but if it applied the $5 price to Samsung, the Korean company could be paying Microsoft about $1.6 billion per year.

Samsung said it had agreed in 2011 to pay Microsoft royalties in exchange for a patent license covering phones that ran Google Android operating system. Samsung also agreed to develop Windows phones and share confidential business information with Microsoft, according to court filings.