Apple and Google have announced a patents truce, which will have little direct effect on the smartphone industry, but is being taken as a symbolic step on the way to ending the IPR wars of the past two years. However, although talks are being held to end Apple’s bitter fights with Samsung, any rapprochement there will take a lot longer. Various factors have raised hopes of an end to the hostilities which have distracted handset makers and wasted large sums of money on lawyers rather than R&D. Judges and shareholders have grown impatient of suits which seemed to be more about clipping rivals’ wings than defending inventions; major players have increasingly been signing cross-licensing deals, as seen in Samsung’s reconciliation…