Finnish mobile giant Nokia said on Friday it was withdrawing all its
lawsuits against Blackberry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) after
reaching an agreement on patent licencing.
Last month Nokia filed
lawsuits in the United States, Britain and Canada against RIM claiming
it had breached an agreement on using Nokia patents on WLAN local area
network technology.
"We are very pleased to have resolved our
patent licensing issues with RIM and reached this new agreement, while
maintaining Nokia's ability to protect our unique product
differentiation," said Paul Melin, chief intellectual property officer
at Nokia, in a statement.
The Finnish company said the agreement
includes a one-time payment and on-going payments, all from RIM to
Nokia, with the specific terms confidential.
The dispute arose
from different interpretations of which technologies were covered by a
2003 licensing deal that allows RIM to use Nokia's patented technology.
RIM
had sought arbitration in 2011 to get the deal modified, but a Swedish
court ruled in November it was in breach of contract and could not use
the technology without reaching an agreement with Nokia.
Nokia may
have lost the title as the top-selling mobile phone maker, but the
Finnish company holds patents to over 10,000 types of technology after
having invested approximately 45 billion euros ($60 billion) in research
and development over the past two decades.
RIM has also seen its market share eroded by competition from Apple's iPhone and devices powered by Google's Android system.