The Swedish telecoms company Ericsson has been linked with the 7-year deal with Apple. This will bring the mutual patent litigations between the two companies together for a joint- development of the next generation 5G phones.
According to Cortez Journal, Ericsson, the world's largest wireless equipment producer, just recently announced that the two companies, Ericsson and Apple will be cooperating in the development of fifth generation phones, or 5G. They are also pitching for the enhancement of their video and wireless networks.
Ericsson also announced that it has entered into a worldwide patent cross-licensing agreement with Apple. "We are pleased with this new agreement with Apple, which clears the way for both companies to continue to focus on bringing new technology to the global market, and opens up for more joint business opportunities in the future," Kasim Alfalahi, a chief intellectual property officer at Ericsson, stated in a statement via International Business Times.
And as part of the seven-year agreement, Apple will make an initial payment to Ericsson and they will also pay the royalties. The terms of the agreement are still confidential, but Ericsson claimed that the overall revenue from intellectual property rights in 2015 was approximately to be $1.5 billion up to $1.6 billion, including the extra revenue from Apple in 2014.
Just months ago, Ericsson sued Apple once again just this February 2015 for infringing 41 wireless-related patents that it believed to be critical to the functionality of products such as the iPhone and iPad. Ericsson filed two complaints with the U.S. ITC in an effort to secure a U.S. sales ban on infringing products, as reported by Mac Rumors.
Meanwhile, the union of the two companies includes a cross license that covers patents owned by both companies, the GSM, UMTS and LTE standards used in mobile technology.
Apple's prior licensing deal with Ericsson was signed in 2008 and expired in January 2015.
