Apple & Google End Bitter Mobile Patent Litigation Chapter

Late last week, Apple and Google’s (soon to be Lenovo’s) Motorola Mobility settled their mutual mobile patent claims against one another. However, the companies declined to do a cross-licensing deal, which is often customary in these situations.

While the agreement ends the often bitter litigation between Motorola and Apple, it has no impact on the ongoing Apple-Samsung dispute(s). In that litigation, so far, Apple has won a majority of the courtroom battles, but Samsung is winning the market-share battle out in the world.

Perhaps more significant than the Apple-Google settlement, the companies issued a joint statement indicating they would work together on patent reform. We’ll see what that means in practice.

Most of the “mobile patent wars” outside of Apple-Samsung have now been settled or otherwise negotiated to conclusion. It’s unclear at this point what purpose Apple’s litigation strategy against Samsung serves since it has not been able to blunt the company’s market share gains or impact the Android OS in any significant way.