After Microsoft filed a patent-royalty suit in August last year that alleged that the South Korea-based Samsung had not made Android royalty payments on time resulting in $6.9 million in interest fees, the two companies have settled the issue after months of attempted reconciliation.

A joint statement from the two companies read, “Samsung and Microsoft are pleased to announce that they have ended their contract dispute in U.S. court as well as the ICC arbitration. Terms of the agreement are confidential.” – Samsung’s Jaewan Chi, Executive Vice President and Global Legal Affairs & Compliance Team and Microsoft’s David Howard, Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel.

The dispute refers to a seven year cross-licensing agreement that Microsoft and Samsung signed in September 2011, which meant that Samsung would have to pay Microsoft for each tablet and phone it sold running Android. While the first year’s payments were paid by Samsung, in 2013 Microsoft claimed that Samsung’s $1 billion fee was not paid on time, and the interest on the amount owed was $6.9 million, pertaining to the terms of the original contract.

Samsung had alleged that Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia’s Devices division was in violation of the contract and so withheld payments, which resulted in the lawsuit from Microsoft. Explaining the reasons for the legal action taken against Samsung Microsoft deputy general counsel David Howard stated in an official blog in August 2014, “After becoming the leading player in the worldwide smartphone market, Samsung decided late last year to stop complying with its agreement with Microsoft. In September 2013, after Microsoft announced it was acquiring the Nokia Devices and Services business, Samsung began using the acquisition as an excuse to breach its contract.”

The two companies have however now made-up, but the terms of the settlement are confidential, according to lawyers from both sides. We will probably never find out just what Samsung had to pay to get out of this disagreement, but we do know that the Redmond company’s annual Android patent license agreement earnings is something around the $2 billion mark.

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