Apple and Google have finally decided to end their legal dispute on patent infringements, Jurist reports. The joint motion to dismiss was filed by both tech giants late Friday, May 16.

In a joint statement, both companies agreed to settle the dispute by working together on a patent reform. It also said that their agreement would not include a cross-licensing patent, despite analysts thinking it would be beneficial for both companies to do so.

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Additionally, both parties agreed that they would shoulder their own expenses for the litigations.

The long-running dispute began in 2010 when Motorola filed a lawsuit against Apple for patent infringement. Apple countersued.

In 2012, Google acquired Motorola Mobility for about $12.5 billion, mainly for its extensive patent portfolio. But along with that, Google had also bought the latter's existing lawsuits.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google used Motorola's patents to defend itself against other proceedings against Apple and other big tech giants such as Microsoft.

In light of this latest truce, analyst Van Baker from Gartner Research says that the agreement would be favorable for both companies since these kinds of lawsuits are only a waste of time and money. Moreover, it causes uncertainty to the manufacturers, consumers and investors. By reaching an agreement and thereby ending the dispute, it erases any uncertainty which would practically benefit all parties concerned.

This, however, is only one of the many lawsuits that the two companies have filed against each other. A report by The Wall Street Journal cited about 20 ongoing lawsuits involving both companies in the U.S. and Germany.

Analysts suppose that this incident might cause other tech companies embroiled in ongoing lawsuits to consider the possibility of settling their disputes and coming to a mutual agreement.

Apple said, however, that the agreement doesn't cover litigations against Korea-owned company, Samsung.

Since Samsung uses Google's Android operating system, Google is frequently brought up during the litigations although it is not a direct party to the case.

Earlier this year, Google has decided to sell the Motorola mobile unit division to Chinese-owned computer manufacturer, Lenovo Group Ltd. for $2.9 billion.

TagsSettlement, Agreement, Lawsuit, Patent, Infringement, OS, Operating System, Tech, technology