Rockstar, a patent consortium owned mostly by Apple, has apparently dropped the patent war against Android and Google phone makers. The patent hijinks have cost the smartphone industry billions of dollars so this should be a refreshing change. A federal judge has agreed to stay a series of lawsuits between Rockstar and Google, with a final settlement scheduled for December 29. This is more than a year after Rockstar filed lawsuits against at least seven companies that make Android devices. Since then, the lawsuit pretty much started a global patent battle over smartphones and even Google got into the mix with its own lawsuit.
There’s no info in the court filings regarding a proposed settlement; further, there is evidence that Apple is not only ending its patent war on Google, it is changing all its policies on patent litigation.
Rockstar was made in 2011 when Apple got together with BlackBerry, Microsoft, Sony, and Ericsson to buy $4.5 billion for old Nortel patents and to use Rockstar as a way to attack Google.
