Qualcomm Files a New Lawsuit Against Apple, Claims They Shared Code with Intel

Qualcomm has been in a legal battle against Apple throughout the year. Apple feels that Qualcomm uses its market share to make companies overpay for its technology, but Qualcomm has responded saying that these claims are baseless. As the two have been going back and forth, Qualcomm has just filed a new lawsuit against Apple at a California state court in San Diego, which claims they have “used its unprecedented access” to Qualcomm’s code and shared their secrets with rival chipset maker Intel.

Qualcomm themselves have been fighting legal battles in various countries around the world for alleged antitrust violations. Late last year they faced an $853 million fine in South Korea, they faced a similar charge in China, and there is one happening right now in Taiwan for $773 million. With all of these different investigations going on right now, it makes sense that Apple would step up and use these against Qualcomm during their current legal dispute.

In July Apple told the courts that Qualcomm’s chip licenses were invalid based on a recent court ruling involving manufacturers and drug companies. A month later Qualcomm retaliated and filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple which involved 6 different patents. These patents in question enable high performance in smartphones while extending battery life. While both are billionaire companies, these antitrust violations and legal issues seem to be having an impact on Qualcomm’s bottom line as of late.

The latest news comes to us from Bloomberg, which reports that Qualcomm has filed yet another lawsuit against Apple and claims they may have used its unprecedented access to Qualcomm’s code to help Intel. This is quite interesting because ever since the iPhone 7, they’ve widened their list of suppliers to include Intel. Qualcomm believes that Apple failed to protect their software and says Apple hasn’t allowed them an audit to review how Apple is handling proprietary code. To take this even further, this is an obligation included in their contract with Apple and so far they have failed to comply.

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Source: Bloomberg