Toshiba and Microsoft have signed a cross-licensing pact covering computer and consumer electronics products technologies, the companies said Friday. The agreement was signed in late April and allows the companies to freely use a number of each other's patents, said Makoto Yasuda, a spokesman from Toshiba. Spokesmen from Toshiba and Microsoft declined to discuss how many patents were included in the agreement, or how long the agreement is valid. "I am afraid it's confidential," Yasuda said. The deal follows a December 2003 decision by Microsoft to enter into cross-licensing deals with key partners, said Kazunori Ishii, a spokesman at Microsoft's Japanese unit. Since then, Microsoft has also signed cross-licensing deals with a number of companies including Siemens SAP, he said. Toshiba isn't the first major Japanese electronics maker to sign such an agreement. Last December, Sony signed a five-year cross-licensing deal with Samsung Electronics covering a total of 24,000 patents owned by the two companies, as part of a move to reduce costs and potential friction between the two companies, Sony said.

Posted by GEN-ERIC at 12:23:55 am into the following categories: In The News

---

http://gen-eric.com/patents/htsrv/trackback.php/225

Name:

Email: (not displayed on this site)

Site/Url:

Comment text:

Allowed XHTML tags: <p, ul, ol, li, dl, dt, dd, address, blockquote, ins, del, a, span, bdo, br, em, strong, dfn, code, samp, kdb, var, cite, abbr, acronym, q, sub, sup, tt, i, b, big, small>

URLs, email, AIM and ICQs will be converted automatically.

Options:
Auto-BR (Line breaks become <br />)
Remember me (Set cookies for name, email & url)