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HTC Agrees to Pay Nokia to Settle Patent Spat

The deal boosts Nokia's efforts to expand its patent licensing business and removes at least one headache for struggling HTC.

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One patent dispute settled, seemingly a billion more to go.

Nokia and HTC have announced patent peace following a series of court rulings in which the Taiwanese phone maker was found to have infringed on the Finnish company’s patents. The two companies didn’t say how much the deal will cost HTC, but did confirm that HTC will be paying Nokia.

“We are very pleased to have reached a settlement and collaboration agreement with HTC, which is a longstanding licensee for Nokia’s standards essential patents,” Nokia chief intellectual property officer Paul Melin said in a statement.

Licensing patents is one of three key businesses, along with mapping and network equipment, that will remain at Nokia after it sells its mobile phone business to Microsoft.

For HTC, already losing ground to Samsung and other rivals in phones, the settlement is a chance to remove a legal cloud and ensure that it can keep selling its products without threat of injunctions from Nokia.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.