The epic Apple-Samsung patent war is finally nearing its end

Since April 2011 Apple and Samsung have not just been fighting each other on the high street, but the two have been at loggerheads in the courtroom too. Both companies have been in dispute over patents

Last year, things got dramatic as a US court ordered Samsung to pay Apple an astonishing $1.049bn over claims that Samsung stole Apple's patents. As you might imagine, Samsung put up a fight, and Foss Patents now reports that Samsung has managed to talk the judge down to a still whopping $548m.

That's enough cash to buy over 844,000 iPhone 6Ss.

Samsung has apparently agreed to pay the cash, and instead now the legal dispute has descended into haggling over payment terms. For example, Samsung wants guarantees that if the courts changes its mind, it can get a refund on the payment.

Beginning of the end?

So could this point to an end for the long running dispute? It seems the companies are slowly getting there, as also last year the two agreed to drop all of the patent lawsuits against each other that were being contested outside the US.

The payment will allegedly have to be made before December 14. We've no indication of how Samsung will transfer the cash to Apple, but we're guessing it won't be using Apple Pay.

The reason patents are so hotly contested is because it theoretically gives companies an exclusive right to pursue whatever idea it is they have come up with. This is why companies will often patent the most absurdly obvious (like "pull to refresh" on an email list) or weird thing (like this).

So if anyone else does produce products that use this technology, even if they don't make the product themselves, they can take them to court and get a nice big fat payout.

• We're still waiting for this patent to pay off.