For those who don’t keep up with their telecom manufacturing legal news (for shame!), Broadcom and Qualcomm have basically been hating the hell out of each other for three years. It all started with a little thing like Broadcom blocking the import of every single Qualcomm-chip equipped phone into America. Since “equipping phones with chips” is Qualcomm’s entire deal, this was kind of a problem.

It’s all based on allegations that the Qualcomm chips violated a Broadcom patent (and note that this isn’t “You stole it”, just the modern “We saw it first” version of patents). There followed three years of claims, counterclaims, suits, press releases which could be bottled and used to dissolve paint. Or nuclear waste.

But it seems they’ve all been watching Sesame Street, as they’ve just agreed to put it all behind them and get on with their chip-making lives. True, the statement says “the dismissal with prejudice of all litigation between the companies”, making even a truce sound like an extermination mission in an unnamed South American country, and the way Qualcomm has to pay almost a billion dollars to settle the deal makes it a little less “we agree” and more “we give in”, but at least it’s all over. Until the next chip.