© 2024 Blaze Media LLC. All rights reserved.
Apple Drops Legal Battle Against the Company Steve Jobs Vowed to Destroy
FILE - In this Saturday, Oct. 20, 2012, file photo, employees cheer customers as they enter a newly-opened Apple Store in the Wangfujing shopping district in Beijing. Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe Systems announced Thursday, April 24, 2014, they have settled a class-action lawsuit alleging they conspired to prevent their engineers and other highly sought technology workers from getting better job offers from one another. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File) AP Photo/Andy Wong, File

Apple Drops Legal Battle Against the Company Steve Jobs Vowed to Destroy

Is the "thermonuclear war" over for good?

Apple and Google are making peace — for now at least.

The two tech giants agreed to drop all lawsuits between them, as the Wall Street Journal reported late Friday, ending a legal battle that has raged since 2010.

FILE - In this Saturday, Oct. 20, 2012, file photo, employees cheer customers as they enter a newly-opened Apple Store in the Wangfujing shopping district in Beijing. Apple and tech rival Google declared a legal truce Friday.(AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)

All told, Apple and Google had 20 lawsuits between them in the U.S. and Germany, with many suits stemming from Apple's claims that Google is basically copying many of its designs and software.

Apple had not directly sued Google, but instead went after phone makers including Motorola, which Google bought in 2012 for $12.5 billion.

"For its part, Google may have been encouraged to settle with Apple after regulators in the U.S. and Europe criticized the company for the legal strategy it employed with Motorola's patents," the WSJ report notes.

The truce is a major step away from the legacy of Steve Jobs, who once threatened "thermonuclear war" legal against Google.

A person prepares to search the internet using the Google search engine, on May 14, 2014, in Lille. Google often clashes with Apple in the mobile space, where Google's Android operating system competes with iOS. (Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images)

"Our lawsuit is saying, 'Google you f***ing ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off,'" Jobs said, according to biographer Walter Isaacson. "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product."

Apple will still be pursuing its patent litigation against Samsung, however, and Google will continue to face legal challenges from the Rockstar Consortium, which is partly owned by Apple.

Want to leave a tip?

We answer to you. Help keep our content free of advertisers and big tech censorship by leaving a tip today.
Want to join the conversation?
Already a subscriber?