Google and LG Sign Long Term Patent Cross-Licence Agreement

On November 5, 2014, LG Electronics Inc (LG) released a statement on its website that LG and Google Inc (Google) have entered into a long-term patent cross-licensing agreement. The agreement is said to cover a broad range of products and technologies and includes existing patents and patents that will be filed over the next 10 years. The contract includes provisions that will enable LG to use Google’s mobile and software patents for an undisclosed royalty fee and allow Google to use LG’s technologies relating to its wearable devices. Google has been busy this year executing cross-licensing agreements with its allies. LG manufactures a number of devices that run on Google’s Android operating system including the Nexus 6 and LG G3 mobile devices. Google signed a similar agreement with the leading Android manufacturer and industry titan, Samsung Electronics, in January of this year and followed this with another agreement with Cisco in February. Google and each of these parties have stated that the main objectives for signing these agreements are to encourage co-operation and to reduce the potential of litigation that has become common in the mobile and tablet device market. The parties hope that this will allow them to focus their attention on producing innovative and quality products. For more information, see: http://tinyurl.com/p3pqhqw and http://tinyurl.com/pz2vmj5 Summary by: Thomas Wong