Zebra Technologies Corp. (Vernon Hills, Ill.) announced a settlement and license agreement with Paxar Americas, Inc., the U.S. operating subsidiary of Paxar Corp., settling all disputes between the two companies.
Under the settlement, Zebra has received a fully paid-up, perpetual, worldwide irrevocable license to certain patents owned by Paxar, including those asserted in Paxar’s lawsuit against Zebra, and agreed to pay Paxar $63.75 million in return. In addition, Paxar has agreed to dismiss its complaint against Zebra with no ability to reassert these claims. The parties have released each other from all claims, including claims that were asserted in the lawsuit and may have existed on the settlement date. Zebra did not admit any liability with respect to any claim.
“We believe this agreement is in the best interests of Zebra’s customers and stockholders since it provides Zebra and its channel partners with additional flexibility to operate and to sell existing and future Zebra products,” stated Edward Kaplan, Zebra’s chairman and chief executive officer. “It eliminates the need to apply additional management and company resources to the dispute, as well as the risk of further protracted and costly litigation. Zebra maintains its financial strength, with its large remaining cash and investment balances. We continue to have the capacity to make acquisitions and invest in our business. All of this enables the company to further extend our global leadership in delivering specialty digital printing solutions.”
Zebra is evaluating the accounting treatment related to the settlement and expects that a significant portion of the total settlement will be expensed in the company’s third quarter, which ends September 30, 2006.
Source: Zebra Technologies
