The way Jobs closes it is quite unusual however because in this case NewsCorp were late movers. Apple had already reached terms with all their competitors and could put on the table a take it or leave it offer which Murdoch couldn’t refuse.

I was part of the team in charge on negotiating the termination of an on-going contract involving a potential settlement in the low teens millions of dollars between two huge industrial companies once. Obviously it’s nothing as big as a deal between Apple and TSMC but still not an insignificant sum.

I was surprised by how straightforward the whole thing went. Basically we had prepared our arguments: we knew the minimum payment we could justify, the maximum we thought the contract allowed them to ask, what we were aiming for and how much we estimated going to court would cost us and them. They had done the same. There were a couple of back and forth where one party made an offer, the other countered with another one explaining why what was asked didn’t apply and why it should rather be like so and so. At some point, we said that’s our last offer we won’t move anymore. They decided to agree and that was it.