The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, related to a contract between Microsoft and Veritas -- which merged into Symantec in 2005 -- dating to 1996.

Symantec alleged that "Microsoft has deliberately and surreptitiously misappropriated Symantec's valuable data-storage technologies, misled and thereby convinced the United States government to issue patents to Microsoft based on technologies invented by Symantec, attempted unsuccessfully to persuade Symantec to forgive Microsoft' s misdeeds under the guise of expanding a business relationship, and ultimately built portions of its next generation operating system on this house of cards."

Here's coverage from the beginning of the suit.

According to court filings, the two sides entered mediation before Magistrate Judge Edward A. Infante on March 20. Clearly, the outcome was positive. I'll update this post with statements from the companies when I receive them.

Update, 3:15: Both companies, not surprisingly, are releasing the same statement.

Microsoft and Symantec are pleased to have amicably resolved this dispute in a manner that reaffirms and extends our technical cooperation on volume management technologies. This agreement will produce significant benefits for our many mutual customers using mission-critical storage software technologies.

Beyond that, there's no details on the terms of their settlement.