Microsoft and Samsung end their long-time feud over patents as possibilities of the tech giants collaborating gets stronger.

On Monday, Feb. 9, Microsoft said in a statement that Samsung and the tech giant have settled a contract dispute over patent royalties, though terms of the settlement are confidential.

According to WSJ.com, Samsung and Microsoft both announced the agreement in an identical two-sentence post on their respective blogs.

Samsung posted "An Update on the Samsung-Microsoft contract dispute" on its blog:

"Samsung and Microsoft are pleased to announce that they have ended their contract dispute in U.S. court as well as the ICC arbitration. Terms of the agreement are confidential." - Samsung's Jaewan Chi, Executive Vice President and Global Legal Affairs & Compliance Team and Microsoft's David Howard, Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel.

According to reports from Reuters, Microsoft sued Samsung in a federal court in New York last year, for breaching a collaboration agreement by initially refusing to make royalty payments after Microsoft announced its plan to acquire Nokia's handset business back in Sept. 2013.

Although the Android platform is owned by Google Inc., Microsoft stated that some of its patents such as methods for displaying multiple windows in a Web browser are included in Android technologies. Thus, Samsung and other smartphone makers of handsets powered by Android pay royalty fees to Microsoft for each Android device they sell.

The lawsuit further revealed that Samsung still owed $6.9 million in interest on more than $1 billion in patent royalties it delayed paying. Samsung, however, counteracted claiming that the Nokia acquisition violated its 2011 collaboration deal with Microsoft.

According to WSJ.com, a Samsung spokeswoman declined to comment on Tuesday, Feb. 10 in Seoul, saying only that "Microsoft and Samsung have agreed on settlement terms that address both companies' concerns regarding the terms of the contracts."

Despite the fact that Samsung heavily relies on Android platform for almost all of its handsets, it has manufactured a few smartphones and tablets powered by Microsoft's Windows Phone OS.

"smartphones and tablets based on Microsoft's Windows operating system aren't selling very well," J.K. Shin, Samsung's co-chief executive in charge of the company's mobile division, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in 2013.