Apple Says Qualcomm’s Chip Licenses are Invalid, Qualcomm Responds

Many people know of Qualcomm because of how popular their Snapdragon SoCs are among Android smartphones these days. While their chips are a solid source of income for the company, they actually make a lot of their profits from patent royalties and modem licenses. However, the way that Qualcomm licenses their patents has gotten them in a lot of trouble lately and they were even forced to pay back hundreds of millions of dollars to BlackBerry recently.

Qualcomm has been the target of antitrust investigations in multiple countries over the last few years because of the way they enforce specific rules with their licenses. But it was back in January of this year when Qualcomm became the target of a $1 billion lawsuit from Apple. The initial lawsuit claimed that Qualcomm is overcharging companies for their chips, and adds onto that by saying they have refused to pay close to $1 billion in promised rebates.

Qualcomm feels those claims are baseless, but it doesn’t look like Apple is backing down anytime soon. Apple has even expanded their attack against Qualcomm by saying the agreements made that awards Qualcomm a percentage of each iPhone sold, are completely invalid. Apple is basing this new filing on a case just last month where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that manufacturers and drug companies shouldn’t be able to control how their products are used or resold.

Apple has even gone as far as to ask the court to stop some lawsuits that Qualcomm filed against Foxconn and three other contract makers which currently assemble the iPhone. The very same day, Qualcomm came out and responded to Apple’s claims and said Apple is actually trying to distract the court from their misleading statements. Qualcomm says that Apple is trying to convince the court that Qualcomm’s tech are limited to the cellular modem when that is simply not the case.

This case no doubt has a long ways to go before we will see a resolution and we will be keeping an eye on it, since the decision made by the courts could have ramifications that ripple throughout the entire mobile industry.

Source: Reuters Source: Qualcomm