BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) has paid its rival Finnish mobile maker Nokia €50m ($65m) to resolve a patent war between the two firms, which was mainly associated with WiFi networking.
Patent disputes between both firms began in November 2012, when Nokia sued Canada-based RIM in the UK, Canada and the US in order to enforce a Swedish arbitration ruling against the firm.
According to the Financial Times, if that ruling had been upheld, RIM would have been compelled to halt the sales of its WiFi enabled handsets in those markets.
The two firms revealed the settlement of all patent litigation between them and a new patent license agreement on 21 December 2011, but at that stage the terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
Both mobile makers have experienced major setbacks in their smartphones businesses after the success of Apple’s iPhone and smartphones powered by Google’s Android operating system. Meanwhile Nokia has collaborated with Microsoft to develop smartphones based on the Windows Phone operating system.
