The brawl lasted almost five years, but Microsoft and Google finally managed to find common ground. Obviously, this is the mystery concerning the conditions for the signing of this non-aggression pact relating to technological patents.
The agreement ends just under 20 legal proceedings in the United States and Germany. In the background, a dispute that Google inherited after the acquisition of Motorola Mobility. If the latter has since joined the fold of Lenovo, Google has retained most of the patent portfolio.
The brawl concerned royalties relating to technologies used in the Xbox game console and Motorola Mobility smartphones, or a method of synchronizing calendars with Microsoft's ActiveSync.
Besides dropping lawsuits, Microsoft and Google will also " collaborate on certain patent issues "and" work together in other areas in the future for the benefit of our customers "This joint work already seems to have taken shape.
Microsoft and Google are indeed involved – with others – in the Alliance for Open Media initiative whose objective is a royalty-free video codec with a significant improvement in H.265 / HEVC performance for very high video definition. And precisely, there was a dispute in connection with video encoding.
It remains to be seen whether all the tensions between Microsoft and Google will subside. We can doubt it, especially since the Redmond company continues to collect royalties from manufacturers of Android terminals by justifying a violation of some of its patents.
