Microsoft and Spyglass settled their browser royalty tiff today and
agreed to expand their partnership in the Web device market. Microsoft
has agreed to restructure the royalty agreement and will pay Spyglass
$8 million, mostly in cash, to buy out future royalties through the
end of 1998. The agreement mentions that Spyglass no longer plans to
audit Microsoft's books. The original disagreement started when
Spyglass revealed that Microsoft had only paid it the minimum required
for each quarterly royalty.
Now that the dispute is over, the two companies plan to collaborate on
open standards for Web devices such as WebTV and Windows CE-based
products. Microsoft's popular Internet Explorer Web browser is based
on Mosaic technology licensed from Spyglass in 1995