Mumbai, Dec. 9: Mahindra Satyam will pay Upaid Systems Ltd $70 million to settle a patent dispute that has been raging for more than two years.

The company today said that it would make the first payment of $45 million to the UK-based Upaid within 10 days of getting the necessary regulatory approvals.

It will pay the rest within 12 months of the first payment.

The settlement requires Upaid to “grant to Mahindra Satyam a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free licence on all of its patent, and provides for the dismissal of all pending actions”.

Upaid, which provides payment solutions in mobile phones, had signed an MoU with Satyam to develop a solution on May 29, 1997.

Satyam employees were involved in creating the main architecture of the software.

After the project was executed, Upaid wanted to patent the technology. For this, it needed the signatures of around 20 Satyam employees who worked on the project. Satyam helped Upaid to get the signatures, though some of the employees had, by then, left the company.

Upaid subsequently filed a suit against Qualcomm and Verizon Wireless in 2005, alleging that they were using its patented technology.

One of the Satyam employees who had worked on the Upaid project had moved to Verizon by then. He said that Satyam had forged his signature, leading to Upaid filing a suit against Satyam in 2007 accusing it of forgery and fraud.