Equifax and Fair Isaac Corp., a company that developed the credit-scoring software behind many of the Atlanta credit bureau's products, have reached a truce on a nearly 2-year-old lawsuit that was souring their partnership.

At the same time that Fair Isaac agreed to dismiss its lawsuit against Equifax, the companies announced a partnership "to develop and sell advanced analytics and scoring solutions" and to speed up Equifax's use of the latest version of Fair Isaac's widely used credit-scoring product, called FICO 08.

Equifax and Fair Isaac did not disclose terms of the agreements, announced Tuesday.

Banks and many other companies use Minneapolis-based Fair Isaac's FICO scores to evaluate the creditworthiness of customers when deciding to make home and car loans and to open credit card accounts. Equifax has been incorporating such credit scores into its own credit reports and other services for about two decades. The nation's other two major credit bureaus, Experian and TransUnion, also include FICO scores in their services.

However, those cozy relationships with Fair Isaac chilled in 2006 when Equifax, Experian and TransUnion formed a separate company that developed a competing credit-scoring product called VantageScore.

Later that year, Fair Isaac sued the three companies, alleging that they were acting anti-competitively by selling and setting prices for its FICO scores at the same time that they sold their joint venture's competing product.

Equifax soon retaliated by freezing its efforts to incorporate Fair Isaac's updated FICO score with its services.

"We elected not to implement FICO 08" because of the lawsuit, said Paul Springman, Equifax's chief marketing officer. "They weren't happy about it and our customers weren't happy about it, but we decided this was our stake in the ground."

Under the agreements announced Tuesday, Fair Isaac now expects to roll out FICO 08 at Equifax in the first quarter of next year. Fair Isaac said it did so with Experian last fall and plans a TransUnion rollout soon.

"My understanding is that the agreement resolves the concerns that Fair Isaac had over the way Equifax was supporting" its FICO product, said Craig Watts, a spokesman for Fair Isaac. He said Fair Isaac will continue pursuing its lawsuit against the other two credit bureaus and their joint venture.