Google and Microsoft agree legal truce over Android and Xbox patents

Five-year patent battle comes to an end with both companies teaming up to develop better video compression technology

Google and Microsoft have agreed to drop their long-running patent disputes over smartphone and games console technology.

The disputes, which lasted for some five years, saw Google demanding royalties in the US and Germany over technology and ideas in the Xbox games console, while Microsoft in return had sought to stop Google's former Motorola Mobility subsidiary from using particular features.

"Google and Microsoft have agreed to collaborate on certain patent matters and anticipate working together in other areas in the future to benefit our customers," the two companies claim in a joint statement.

Those areas include the development of royalty-free video compression technology in an initiative that will also include Amazon and Netflix. The two companies also agreed to lobby the European Union for a unified patent system across the EU. According to Bloomberg, the aim of their lobbying is to prevent the EU-wide patent court currently under development from degenerating into the free-for-all for patent trolls that the US intellectual property system has become.

The case between the two companies kicked off in 2010, when pugnacious Steve Ballmer was still CEO of Microsoft, with the software giant accusing Google of incorporating its intellectual property into the Android mobile operating system.

Google subsequently acquired Motorola's ailing mobile phone division in order to arm itself with a war chest of mobile intellectual property with which to fight back.

When Google bought Motorola, Microsoft was already in a legal tussle with the company over ActiveSync, the means by which calendars and other apps on a mobile phone can be synchronised with desktop applications.

"Microsoft obtained an order blocking the feature on Motorola phones imported into the US though it later said that US customs officials never enforced it," according to Bloomberg.

Financial terms of the deal between Microsoft and Google have not been disclosed.

Microsoft, meanwhile, makes more money from intellectual property licences to makers of phones featuring Google Android than it does from its own somewhat moribund Windows Phone operating system.