DHAKA: Microsoft fired a legal salvo at longtime partner Samsung, accusing the South Korean giant of breaching a contract over licensing of technology used in the competitive smartphone market.

‘After becoming the leading player in the worldwide smartphone market, Samsung decided late last year to stop complying with its agreement with Microsoft,’ the US technology firm’s deputy counsel said in an online post, reports The Times of India.

The complaint filed in federal court in New York alleges Samsung is balking at making payments for patented Microsoft technology used in its Android smartphones and tablets.

‘We will review the complaint in detail and determine appropriate measures in response,’ Samsung told media.

Microsoft contends the South Korean consumer electronics colossus is not adhering to a contract from 2011, and said it filed the court action after months of ‘painstaking negotiation’.

The legal pact involved Samsung paying to use Microsoft intellectual property, according to the post by deputy counsel David Howard.

Samsung’s smartphone sales have quadrupled since the contract was signed as the company grew from shipping 82 million Android-powered handsets in 2011 to shipping 314 million three years later, Microsoft maintained.

Samsung has become a smartphone Goliath, and the biggest maker of handsets powered by Google's free Android software.

‘Samsung predicted it would be successful, but no one imagined their Android smartphone sales would increase this much,’ Howard said.

After Microsoft made a deal last year to buy Nokia’s smartphone business, Samsung stopped abiding by the cross-licensing contract, the US company says.

Microsoft said in the filing that Samsung used the Nokia business acquisition as grounds to step away from the licensing deal.

BDST: 1952 HRS, AUG 02, 2014