Burst.com announced on Wednesday that Apple has agreed to pay $10 million and thus settle a patent infringement lawsuit involving almost two years of litigation. The Santa Rosa-based company also said that Apple would make this payment in exchange for a non-exclusive license to its patent portfolio. By accepting this deal, Burst agrees not to sue Apple for any future infringement of the DVR patent and any other patents that might issue from the pending DVR-related applications.

The agreement came after almost two years of litigations between the two companies, so this is why the court costs and attorney’s fees would reduce the proceeds to Burst.com to $4.6 million.

Burst.com asked Apple in 2004 to license some of its patents, claiming that they were at the heart of the iPod. But instead of licensing these patents, in January 2006 Apple sued Burst.com seeking a judgment that the company’s patents were invalid and not infringed. Three months later, Burst.com countersued and alleged that Apple infringed four of its patents for transmission of compressed audio and video files in iTunes, iPod, QuickTime and iLife.

In March 2005, Burst.com settled a similar lawsuit with Microsoft, when the latter had to pay $60 million for a non-exclusive license to Burst.com’s patents.