According to sources, Intel agreed to pay Nvidia $1.5 billion in order to settle a 2009 legal dispute between the two concerning chipset patent infringements. The sum will be paid to Nvidia in 5 annual installments starting at Jan. 18, and Intel will receive full access Nvidia’s patents – a life saver for Intel’s upcoming GPU and CUP-hybrid Sandy Bridge chips.

“The trouble began in 2008, when Intel released its Nehalem generation of PC chips. The two companies disagreed over whether the 2004 agreement allowed Nvidia to make chipsets that would work with Nehalem chips and generations of chips that would follow. They filed dueling lawsuits in the Delaware Court of Chancery in early 2009.”

Going back to Nvidia, the chip maker also gains the right to make processors in general, including the ARM-based processor it announced recently. Nonetheless, Intel-compatible x86 microprocessors are still out of the question.

The chipset wars in particular have been heating up lately, but there’s a few other software-related patent suits that are affecting the industry at large. Microsoft paid $338 million to Uniloc in a patent infringement lawsuit concerning the latter’s privacy detection software. We also covered Paul Allen’s patent patent suits against just about every major player related to the tech industry including Apple, Google, Facebook, AOL, Netflix, Yahoo, eBay, YouTube, Office Depot, Office Max, and Staple.