IBM will receive $775 million in cash and $75 million in credit for software from Microsoft to settle claims that resulted from the federal government's antitrust case against Microsoft in the 1990s.
The payout is one of the largest that Microsoft (MSFT) has made since U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled in 2000 that Microsoft engaged in anticompetitive practices. Jackson's ruling cited IBM (IBM) as a company that Microsoft had forced to "desist from certain technological innovations and business initiatives."
Citing the higher Windows prices and other tactics -- such as delaying IBM's Windows 95 license until 15 minutes before the product was launched -- Jackson wrote that IBM repeatedly got "discriminatory treatment" from Microsoft.
IBM hadn't sued Microsoft, but still pressed for retribution for the behavior cited by Jackson. Microsoft reached a similar deal with Gateway for $150 million in April.
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Sharing: Samsung Electronics said it had signed an agreement with rival Motorola to share mobile technology.
The cross-license agreement is the latest move by global tech firms to try and avoid costly legal disputes over intellectual property.
Samsung also signed a cross-license agreement with Sony (SNE) late last year to share patents on basic technologies such as those associated with chips and industry standard technologies.
Shares in Samsung, the most valuable technology company outside the United States, closed up 1.42 percent.
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Free access: An adult website has sued online retailer Amazon, accusing the company of copyright infringement for displaying thousands of the website's explicit images in response to computer users' searches.
The website operator claims search engines like Google (GOOG) and A9 undercut its revenues by giving web surfers an unauthorized free look at its explicit images. The company charges a monthly membership fee of $26 for its website.
In the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills-based Perfect 10 is seeking an injunction against the Seattle-based retailer and unspecified damages.
Perfect 10 claims it has sent several warning notices to Google and Amazon (AMZN), but both sites continue to display some 2,500 images from Perfect 10 and other adult websites without permission.
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New cameras: Shares in internet video technology company IPIX surged in premarket trading after the company won a $2.4 million Pentagon contract to develop the world's highest resolution video camera.
The Virginia-based company said that the research contract from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA, was for IPIX (IPIX) to research and build the camera to be used in aerial surveillance.
IPIX shares were up 12 percent in premarket trading on the Inet electronic brokerage system.
IPIX shares have been volatile, briefly hitting $27 last year after the company said a highway video surveillance system had successfully completed tests. After the company won the Pentagon deal, shares closed at $2.48.
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Compiled by David Cohn. AP and Reuters contributed to this report.
