Toshiba Corp., the world's second-biggest flash memory maker, said it will pay $288 million to Micron Technology Inc. to end patent litigation started by a company Micron bought in June.

Lexar Media Inc. sued Tokyo-based Toshiba over NAND flash memory that stores large amounts of data in digital cameras and music players such as Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod. Toshiba will get some of Lexar's patent rights and license others.

The accord ends a battle that included a $465.4 million jury verdict in a trade secrets case against Toshiba, to be retried on damages in California, and a U.S. International Trade Commission complaint seeking to block the importation of Toshiba products accused of infringing Lexar patents. The agreement came sooner than expected, J.P. Morgan analyst Shawn Webster said.

"We are surprised a settlement was reached already as we had expected the case to remain open until at least the end of" the year, Webster told clients in a note. He called the $288 million "extra gravy, spread out over multiple years."

Micron, based in Boise, is the biggest U.S. maker of computer memory chips. In a regulatory filing Friday, the company said the payments from Toshiba will be made over a period of years and it hasn't decided how to account for them.

"We have enjoyed a strong relationship with Toshiba for a number of years, have the highest respect for Toshiba as an innovator in flash technology and see no merit in continuing to pursue this litigation," Micron Chief Executive Officer Steve Appleton said in a statement issued jointly with Toshiba.

Micron bought Lexar for $801 million in June over the objections of billionaire Carl Icahn and hedge fund managers who said the price was too low.

Former Lexar shareholder Elliott Associates LP, which sold its stake after losing the fight against Micron's purchase, in March estimated that Lexar could get as much as $600 million pretax from the trade secrets case alone, and a total of $1.3 billion from all of its litigation.

Toshiba said the settlement doesn't affect its earnings outlook for the current fiscal year.

"We appreciate that Micron approached this issue in a positive spirit that allowed the parties to work together to bring all outstanding litigation and claims to a full and final resolution," Masashi Muromachi, corporate executive vice president of Toshiba and head of the company's semiconductor unit, said in the statement.

NAND is a type of flash memory that is faster at writing data and more reliable than the type called NOR, which is used to store programs in other electronics

Contributing: Mari Murayama; Pavel Alpeyev