Microsoft announced Wednesday that it has settled its patent infringement suit against Salesforce.
Under the terms of the deal, Salesforce.com and Microsoft will have access to each other’s patent portfolio. Salesforce will have broad coverage for Microsoft patents covering products and services as well as back-end server infrastructure.
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Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Microsoft said Salesforce was compensating the software giant “based on the strength of Microsoft’s … operating systems, cloud services, and customer relationship management software.”
“We are pleased to reach this agreement with Salesforce.com to put an end to the litigation between our two companies,” Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing at Microsoft, said in a statement. “Microsoft’s patent portfolio is the strongest in the software industry and is the result of decades of software innovation. Today’s agreement is an example of how companies can compete vigorously in the marketplace while respecting each other’s intellectual property rights.”
“Salesforce.com is pleased to put this litigation behind us,” Jane Hynes, vice president of corporate communication for Salesforce.com, said in a statement.
Microsoft sued Salesforce in May for infringing on nine of its patents. Those patents covered methods and systems for providing and displaying a Web page having an embedded menu, stacking toolbars in a computer display, identifying and obtaining computer software from a remote computer, and controlling access to data entities in a computer network, among other things.
A month later, Salesforce filed its own suit, accusing Microsoft of infringing on five of its patents with programs like Windows Server and the .Net platform.
Microsoft has similar licensing agreements with Amazon, Lexmark, Panasonic, and more.
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