A 10-year extension of a “global patent cross-license...

A 10-year extension of a “global patent cross-license agreement” was agreed to by Samsung Electronics and Google, said a Samsung news release Monday (http://bit.ly/1lfMkxO). The agreement gives the companies access to one another’s patent portfolios, it said. The deal “can reduce the potential for litigation and focus instead on innovation,” said Allen Lo, Google’s deputy general counsel for patents.