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LG, Sony settle patent disputes

By Nadine Arendse
Johannesburg, 18 Aug 2011

LG, Sony settle patent disputes

LG Electronics and Sony said they have settled patent infringement lawsuits covering digital televisions, Blu-ray players and mobile handsets and agreed to cross licence each others' patents covering these electronic devices, according to Total Telecom.

Spokespeople at both LG and Sony declined to provide further details of the settlement conditions between the two companies, reports The Washington Post.

Sony and LG have been locked in lawsuits over patents relating to smartphones, Blu-ray players and digital television sets.

Last year, Sony filed a complaint against LG with the US International Trade Commission to block LG from shipping its Rumor Touch to the US. LG then filed a complaint about Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) infringing on its Blu-ray technology that led to the gaming consoles being seized for ten days by customs officers in the European Union in February.

Late last year, Sony brought a patent-infringement claim of its own against LG Electronics to the ITC. It claimed LG mobile phones violated its intellectual property and sought to prevent the handsets from being shipped to the US as part of a continuing patent-infringement lawsuit with LG, says The Wall Street Journal.

In March, Sony said a Dutch court lifted a preliminary injunction that had interrupted the distribution of its PS3 game consoles in Europe.

The ruling was handed down at the behest of LG, which sued Sony for patent infringement over Blu-ray technology used in the PS3. The court ruling had stranded hundreds of thousands of PS3 consoles at a Dutch port for over a week.

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