RIM shells out £40m to settle Nokia patent dispute

BlackBerry smartphone manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) has paid Finnish rival Nokia 50 million (40.6 million) to settle a patent dispute, it has emerged.

The court battle between the two companies centred on the use of Wireless local access network (WLAN) technologies in BlackBerry devices, to which Nokia holds the intellectual property rights.

The Finnish phone manufacturer filed lawsuits in the UK, Canada and the US in November 2012, seeking to enforce a Swedish ruling against RIM.

It stated that RIM was in breach of contract and was not entitled to manufacture or sell WLAN products without agreeing royalties with Nokia.

RIM is not entitled to sell WLAN products without agreeing royalties with Nokia.

The settlement was reached on 21 December 2012, with the two organisations announcing an end to "all patent litigation between the companies" and a new license agreement.

However, details of the settlement and the lump sum payment have only now come to light, thanks to a regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to the Financial Times, RIM is expected to pay a license fee of between 1.24 and 3.10 per handset sold that uses Nokia's technology.

Nokia and RIM have seen their marketshare dwindle in recent years as the popularity of Android and iOS devices has soared.

However, Nokia is believed to hold the industry's most extensive wireless technology patent portfolio, from which it derives an estimated 402 million in revenues each year.