IDG News Service - Qualcomm Inc., the world's largest maker of mobile phone chips, agreed to pay chip designer Broadcom Corp. $891 million to settle a long running patent dispute and to end all courtroom proceedings.
The agreement ends litigation in the U.S., the European Union and South Korea and gives each company the right to use the other's patent portfolio for four years, they said in a statement.
Qualcomm will make its first payment of $200 million by the end of June.
The settlement ends a dispute in which Qualcomm had lost at least one court case and saw its market threatened by a U.S. International Trade Commission ban on the import of new mobile phones and PDAs in mid-2007 that contained disputed Qualcomm chips.
The companies said some of the terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
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