14 DAY TRIAL // Coming to offer an episode of mild peace in the saga of IT lawsuits are Sony and LG, whose patent litigations have ended in a cross-license agreement that both parties agreed to.
One thing about the IT industry is that there are so many companies whose interest and product portfolios overlap that it is more or less impossible to lack conflicts.
Apple, for instance, sued many companies in its time and continues to be locked in litigations with a number of others. It itself was called to court recently as well.
Fortunately, even the most drawn out of trials does not last forever, so eventually there come times when the world has cause to rejoice as peace is struck or issues are dropped.
In this particular instance, LG and Sony have managed to reach a common ground before things stalled overmuch.
Of course, seeing as how the only thing that results form lawsuits is high legal fees and a lot of headaches, metaphorical or otherwise, it only makes sense that a cross-patent deal would be sought.
Last year was when Sony called LG to court over a patent infringement claim that it had the U.S. International Trade Commission investigate. The claim was that LG's mobile phones infringed its intellectual property, hence Sony's goal to prevent the handsets form selling in the US.
LG, for its part, sued Sony back in February, saying similar things about its Blu-ray Disk Player and Bravia TVs, as well as PS3.
These are just two examples, however, as the fact is that Sony and LG had 24 lawsuits going on between the two of them.
This agreement they reached puts an end to them all and covers mobile phones, Blu-ray players and TVs. What remains is to see what they start coming up with now that they have a larger legal breathing space.