Apple coughing up $5 million to settle patent-infringement suit

Apple will spend $5 million to settle a suit filed by Elan Microelectronics over the alleged violation of a patent for multi-touch technology, Elan said today.

As part of the settlement, the two companies have also received authorisation to use each other's patents, according to Reuters.

In April 2009, Taiwan-based Elan filed its suit against Apple in US District Court, accusing the iPhone maker of violating a 1998 Elan patent covering a method to detect the use of one or more fingers on a touch pad. Apple then countersued Elan for alleging infringing on two Apple touch pad-related patents.

Elan followed up the initial suit by filing a complaint with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) in 2010, seeking to ban the import of the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, MacBook and Magic Mouse into the US.

The ITC ruled in favour of Apple last year, saying that the company hadn't violated US trade law. But Elan continued to pursue its suit in US District Court. With the case due to go to trial in February, the two parties finally reached a settlement.

Like many tech firms these days, Apple keeps its lawyers busy dealing with a slew of patent-infringement suits. The company has been juggling various suits against Samsung, HTC and Motorola.

In an unrelated matter, Apple has also been fined US$1.2 million by the Italian government over claims that the company encouraged customers to buy AppleCare support even though they had two years of free support after buying an Apple product.

Neither Apple nor Elan immediately responded to CNET's request for comment on the settlement.

Via CNET