Apple and Motorola Mobility held talks in late 2011 in an effort to reach a cross-licensing deal over patents, according to documents released by the European Commission.
The negotiations did not result in a deal - as the two companies' continued lawsuits might suggest - but the EU said Google, which is in the process of acquiring Motorola Mobility, did not object to the prospect of a deal.
The 37-page document in question focuses on the Google-Motorola merger, which the EU approved in mid-February. U.S. officials approved it a day later, but the acquisition has not officially closed.
But the paragraph that discusses a possible deal between Apple and Motorola is likely the most interesting nugget from the EU's document, given that the two companies have been fighting each other over patents rather doggedly around the globe for more than a year.
According to the EU, Apple and Motorola held negotiations in late 2011 "concerning a potential cross-licensing settlement." They "discussed the scope of any potential settlement in the event that the Google/Motorola Mobility transaction is closed."
The deal envisaged a cross-licence possibly to the benefit of all Android OEMs but also with mutual carve-outs," the EU said. "This kind of cross-license would be different in scope from that which might have been concluded by Motorola Mobility prior to the transaction."
The EU noted that there was no evidence that Google "withheld its consent to any proposals submitted to it by Motorola Mobility under this provision." Google actually gave "given specific consent" for Motorola to accept a licensing deal provided Motorola "considers it commercially acceptable."
The news seemingly confirms a report from Dow Jones last week that said Apple was prepared to cut deals with rivals like Samsung and Motorola.
Clearly, the negotiations did not result in any meaningful compromise. Earlier this month, for example, a U.S. district court ordered Google and Motorola to hand over details about their pending merger to Apple.
Patent blogger Florian Mueller wrote yesterday that "from time to time, courts simply require parties to hold such talks even if they don't really want to," pointing to Oracle and Google.
Mueller mentioned a Dec. 22 Apple vs. Motorola trial he attended in Munich. " The court had asked the parties to dispatch representatives who could negotiate a settlement. But Apple didn't even send any corporate officer," Mueller wrote in a blog post. "A junior Apple lawyer in the audience realized that the absence of an Apple official was noted and then said that she would take the court's message (encouraging the parties to settle) home. That was it from Apple's side."
Neill Taylor, vice president of law at Motorola and its chief intellectual property counsel, told the court at the time that Motorola and Apple "held talks on various occasions, including a two-day meeting in November 2011, and continue to talk."
Taylor conceded, however, that there were many disputes and confidentiality prevented him from being more specific, Mueller wrote.
Mueller suggested that the most important part of the EU's document is the mention of carve-outs.
"I have said on a number of occasions that settlements between Apple and Android device makers would be more sophisticated than straightforward one-royalty-for-all-patents portfolio cross-licenses," he wrote. "The greatest strategic benefit to Apple is not in the royalty rate. It's in those carve-outs, which would likely exclude some patents from a deal and impose field-of-use restrictions on the implementation of others."