The first Apple/Qualcomm International Trade Commission (ITC) case is about to kick into high gear, with the prehearing conference scheduled for Friday and the hearing (essentially the equivalent of a trial in the ITC) opening next week. Qualcomm has already dropped several patents from this case and in a companion European case admitted that some…
Tag Archive for Qualcomm
Standard Essential Patents In The News
by Josh Landau •
Standard essential patents (SEPs) are in the news today in a couple ways. First, the EU antitrust authorities fined Qualcomm $1.2 billion over conduct that involved locking Apple into an exclusive supplier arrangement in order to harm competing baseband chipset makers. The EU investigation isn’t the only place Qualcomm’s anti-competitive conduct is being challenged; they’ve…
Qualcomm’s Anti-Competitive Conduct Could Be Exacerbated By Mergers
by Josh Landau •
(Cross post on DisCo.) Qualcomm’s been busy over the past few months. Defending against accusations of anti-competitive conduct from competition authorities in the US and elsewhere around the world, trying to acquire NXP Semiconductors, fending off an acquisition attempt from Broadcom, and—most recently—filing yet another round of new lawsuits to try to force Apple to…
Saying Doesn’t Make It So—Why You Still Shouldn’t Listen To Qualcomm
by Josh Landau •
Last week, CCIA filed a statement on the public interest in Qualcomm v. Apple at the International Trade Commission (ITC), Qualcomm’s newest attempt to use patent law to reinforce their monopoly power over the baseband processor market. In a response filed yesterday, Qualcomm accused CCIA of partaking in a “coordinated effort aimed at misdirecting the…
If Qualcomm Wins At The ITC, We All Lose
by Josh Landau •
This afternoon, CCIA filed comments on the public interest in the Qualcomm v. Apple case pending at the International Trade Commission (ITC). Qualcomm sued Apple in the ITC as part of the large dispute between the two companies. (The dispute continues to grow, having recently added a case in Germany and suits and counter-suits between…
Leaping Dismissal With A Single Order, It’s FTC v. Qualcomm!
by Josh Landau •
Monday, Judge Koh issued an order denying Qualcomm’s motion to dismiss in the FTC v. Qualcomm lawsuit. This is just the first step in the lawsuit, but there are some pretty important signals buried in this order. Motions To Dismiss A motion to dismiss is a request, filed by one side or the other and…
Apple v. Qualcomm – Double Dipping and Breaking Promises
by Josh Landau •
Back in January, Patent Progress wrote about lawsuits filed against Qualcomm by the FTC and by Apple. Today, Apple filed an amended complaint against Qualcomm, based in part on new law resulting from the Supreme Court’s Lexmark decision on patent exhaustion. A High Water Lexmark In Patent Exhaustion The Lexmark case, while important, is actually…
Why No One Should Listen to Qualcomm About Patents
by Matt Levy •
Qualcomm is a major opponent, perhaps the strongest opponent, of patent litigation reform. It’s becoming pretty obvious why. A few weeks ago, the Korean Fair Trade Commission went after Qualcomm for its anti-competitive licensing practices. This time, it’s the U.S. Federal Trade Commission going after Qualcomm for its licensing practices. I wrote about the KFTC…
KFTC Takes Action Against Qualcomm
by Matt Levy •
The Korean Fair Trade Commission (“KFTC”) has just taken extreme action against Qualcomm for anti-competitive practices. The KFTC fined Qualcomm about $850 million and ordered it to change the way it licenses its standard-essential patents. Why did the KFTC do this? Well, Qualcomm breaks its commitments to standard setting organizations, strong-arms its customers into giving…
Samsung v. Apple at the ITC – Summarizing the Public Interest Briefs
by Brendan Coffman •
On November 19 the ITC announced that the full Commission would review the Final Initial Determination in Investigation 337-TA-794, Samsung v. Apple. The ALJ had determined that there was no infringement by Apple of Samsung’s asserted patents, which Samsung has declared as standard essential patents covering technology implemented by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). …