LimeWire agrees to pay $105 million to music industry in piracy settlement

File-sharing software company LimeWire has agreed to pay record companies $105m (£64m) to end a five-year legal battle over illegal filesharing.

The out-of-court settlement with 13 record companies, including labels owned by the four major groups, comes days after the start of a trial to decide damages following a decision that the service was liable for "massive scale infringement" for helping users pirate digital music files, according to The Guardian.

All four of the major labels, Sony Music, Warner, Universal Music and EMI, were included in the settlement.

The labels said that the site was responsible for losing a total of $1 billion in music sales revenue.

"We are pleased to have reached a large monetary settlement following the court's finding that both LimeWire and its founder Mark Gorton personally liable for copyright infringement," said Recording Industry Association of America chairman and chief executive Mitch Bainwol, Telegraph.co.uk reports.

Gorton and officials at LimeWire were unavilable for comment Friday afternoon.

The suit went to a New York City jury trial last week to determine the amount of damages Gorton and LimeWire would be liable to pay after the October court injunction found the company liable for copyright infringement, Los Angeles Times says.