Apple settles with major patent holder at 1:00am the night before trial

A large patent-holding company called Unwired Planet reached a settlement with Apple at 1:00am on Monday, just hours before a jury trial was set to start in San Francisco. A jury had already been selected but was dismissed on Monday morning after the parties' lawyers told US District Judge Vincent Chhabria about their settlement.

Unwired Planet is the patent-holding remains of early mobile company Openwave, which acquired several hundred US patents from Ericsson in early 2013, with Ericsson getting 20 percent of any patent settlements. Later that year, Unwired Planet sued Apple.

In 2015, Judge Chhabria ruled that Apple didn't infringe the four patents at issue in the case. Chhabria's ruling was mostly overturned on appeal (PDF) last July, leading to the jury trial that was set to start yesterday.

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