Tag: peace

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.

 

HP’s Autonomy shareholder peace pact shelved

munich-agreemnetIt looks like shareholders are not allowed to collude with HP board members to blame its god-awful Autonomy buy on the British company after all.

Shareholders and HP agreed to bury the hatchet so that they could sue the former owners of Autonomy. US district judge has said that such a deal was wrong because it absolves HP completely from any blame.

Judge Charles Breyer concluded in a San Francisco court filing that the shareholders appear to be relinquishing a whole universe of potential claims regarding HP governance and practices with no factual predicates that overlap the Autonomy acquisition – the subject of this litigation.

He rejected the motion for preliminary approval of the second amended settlement. Judge Breyer added that HP had abdicated its duty to ensure that shareholders’ rights were being protected.

HP bought UK data search and analysis firm Autonomy for $10 billion, but a year later it claimed it found “serious accounting improprieties” and had to write off $8.8bn from the transaction.

Autonomy has denied any wrongdoing and argued that it played by the rules and HP knew about its accounting practices prior to the buyout.

HP said it was disappointed the court did not approve the settlement as submitted, the court recognised that a settlement releasing the HP directors and officers from Autonomy-related claims ‘represents a fair and reasonable resolution of the litigation’ HP remains committed to holding the architects of the Autonomy fraud accountable.