Nokia and Qualcomm Are Now Best Palls

The Nokia - Qualcomm "wars" that have been making headlines for the past few years are now officially over, as the Finnish giant manufacturer and the California-based company announced today that they have reached an amiable agreement which cancels all the past litigations between them.

If you remember, Nokia has sued Qualcomm and Qualcomm has sued Nokia back, over lots of patent infringements (and in lots of global markets) regarding various technologies like GSM, EDGE, HSDPA, CDMA, WCDMA, LTE, WiMAX and OFDM.

Well, now Nokia and Qualcomm have signed a peaceful deal for no less than 15 years. According to this treaty, Nokia has the right to use all of Qualcomm's patents into its products, while Qualcomm can use the Finnish giant's technologies into its chipsets. Furthermore, Nokia has allowed Qualcomm to have ownership over several patents claimed to be "essential" for the GSM, WCDMA and OFDMA mobile technologies.

"We believe that this agreement is positive for the industry, enabling the market to benefit from innovation and new technologies. The positive financial impact of this agreement is within Nokia's original expectations and fully reflects our leading intellectual property and market positions," stated Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia's Chief Executive Officer.

Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm, also said: "I'm very pleased that we have come to this important agreement. The terms of the new license agreement, including the financial and other value provided to Qualcomm, reflect our strong intellectual property position across many current and future generation technologies. This agreement paves the way for enhanced opportunities between the companies in a number of areas."

As it turns out, Nokia has to pay some unspecified royalties to Qualcomm following the new deal, but I don't think that's a problem for the company that shipped 122 million mobile phones in the second quarter of 2008.