New York, April 12 (Agencies): Microsoft will pay InterTrust Technologies $440 million to license the software pioneer’s anti-piracy patents and settle litigation between the two, the companies said on Monday.

The deal resolved all outstanding legal action between the two sides, the companies said in a joint statement.

California-based InterTrust, a pioneer in the development of software to protect digital music and movies from piracy, filed a lawsuit against Microsoft in 2001.

InterTrust is owned by an investment group that includes Sony Corp and Philips.

The settlement of InterTrust’s patent infringement suit is the latest in Microsoft’s continuing drive to resolve its legal disputes. It comes less than two weeks after the company, the world's largest software maker, agreed to pay Sun Microsystems $1.6 billion to settle Sun's private antitrust suit against Microsoft and to resolve patent claims.

The InterTrust settlement removes a threat to Microsoft’s ability to deliver piracy protection technology in its software products for playing and handling digital media.

The deal also ensures that Microsoft’s end user customers can use Microsoft products and services as they are intended to be used without requiring a licence from InterTrust.

“Licensing InterTrust’s patent portfolio reaffirms Microsoft’s commitment to the importance of intellectual property rights as well as our pledge to end-user customers to stand behind our products in these emerging technology areas,” said Marshall Phelps, deputy general counsel at Microsoft.

“Today’s announcement validates InterTrust’s intellectual property portfolio as seminal to advancing DRM (Digital Rights Management) and trusted computing in the marketplace,” said Talal Shamoon, chief executive officer of InterTrust.

The technology for so-called digital rights management, analysts say, is crucial for Microsoft’s plans to extend its Windows software into the emerging market for legally distributing music and movies over the internet, in competition with rivals like Apple, RealNetworks, Sony and others.

Last week, Microsoft and Time Warner announced that they had acquired a majority stake in another developer of digital rights management technology, ContentGuard, a small company spun out of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. The terms of the purchase were not disclosed.

“The InterTrust agreement and the ContentGuard investment hold the promise of really spurring the availability of digital rights management in the marketplace,” said David Kaefer, a director of business development for Microsoft's intellectual property and licensing group.