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Apple And Imagination Technologies Get Into A New Deal After Dispute

Imagination Technologies, the UK-based chipmaker, announced on Thursday that they have signed a new multi-year agreement with Apple. The two companies earlier had a dispute concerning GPU designs which apple licenses from the chipmaker for their iOS devices.

“Imagination Technologies announces that it has replaced the multi-year, multi-use license agreement with Apple, first announced on February 6, 2014, with a new multi-year license agreement,” a statement from the UK-based chipmaker said.

Now with the agreed license fee, Apple will be granted access to a broader range of intellectual property of Imagination. Back in April 2017, it was announced by Imagination that Apple were planning to stop the use of company’s IP in their hardware designs come 2019. Basically, it was relying on the licensing revenue coming from Apple which, at that time, was around $81 million according to Apple Insider.

The chip manufacturer then decided to enter into a “dispute resolution process” as they accused Apple of “unauthorized use of Imagination’s confidential information and Imagination’s intellectual property rights.”

During the days of the dispute, the iPhone manufacturer was also charged with the allegations of poaching the Imagination employees.

According to Apple, they stopped taking new IP from the company in 2015. Imagination even got a buyer in the China-backed equity company Canyon Bridge. The PowerVR technology of Imagination was also used by Apple in the A-series system-on-chip designs that were used in some iPads, Apple TV 4K, and Apple Watch Series 3. All the A-series designs that came afterwards solely used in-house technology from Apple.

Recently, Imagination announced “IMG A-Series GPU” that, according to the claims, is fastest GPU available to date.

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