The agreement covers disputes involving Motorola Mobility, the mobile phone company Google bought in 2012 and sold last year to Chinese computing business Lenovo.
At the time of its takeover by Google, Motorola Mobility owned approximately 17,000 patents and had made a further 6,000 applications in relation to mobile devices, which represented a significant increase in Google's own patent portfolio at the time.
Last year Apple and Google also agreed to end ongoing patent litigation. Other agreements to end patent litigation were also signed by major technology companies, including between South Korean mobile device manufacturer Samsung and Apple. They agreed to halt ongoing patent lawsuits outside of the US. Samsung also agreed new cross-licensing patent agreements with Google and Ericsson.
In their statement, Google and Microsoft said that they "have agreed to collaborate on certain patent matters and anticipate working together in other areas in the future to benefit our customers".
