Kyocera said the payment would not affect its forecast of a 50 billion yen net profit for the year to March 2004 "because we have already reserved an allowance for the conciliation cost.

"An agreement was reached on December 22 on all the court cases, which have been under way," the world's largest maker of chip-use ceramic said in a statement.

LaPine Technology Inc., a Silicon Valley-based disk drive producer now controlled by Prudential Financial Inc., sued Kyocera in 1987, claiming the Japanese firm breached a contract to supply disk drives.

Kyocera has claimed the supply stoppage was part of its retaliation against LaPine's unilateral decision to alter their business and cooperation agreement.

The International Commercial Court ordered Kyocera to pay 257 million dollars to LaPine in 1990, saying the US firm suffered sizable damage to sales because of breach of contract.

A US federal district court ruled Kyocera pay 428 million dollars to the US firm in 2001 and a federal appellate court ordered the Japanese firm to pay 453 million dollars.

Kyocera had appealed to the US Supreme Court over the case but it will now drop this, it said.

Shares in Kyocera rose 40 yen or 0.56 percent to end the Wednesday morning session at 7,160 yen while the benchmark Nikkei-225 index lost 0.03 percent.

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