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Apple vs. Qualcomm: all of the updates on the worldwide legal battle

For the past two years, Apple has been embroiled in a worldwide legal battle with Qualcomm. The dispute started at the beginning of 2017 when Apple sued Qualcomm for $1 billion. Apple claimed that the chip manufacturer had been charging excessive amounts for the use of its patents, which Apple argued was anti-competitive because it’s almost impossible to make a smartphone without them. Apple also claimed that Qualcomm was withholding $1 billion it was owed because it had cooperated with a South Korean investigation into the company.

The legal battle has continued ever since, and both companies are now fighting various proxy wars across the world. Qualcomm has tried to get Apple’s phones banned in the US, Germany, and China, and both companies have sued and countersued each other over numerous supposed patent violations. Qualcomm has even accused Apple of sharing its code with rival modem manufacturer Intel.

In the background, there could be an even bigger challenge for Qualcomm, which is also being sued by the Federal Trade Commission over alleged anti-competitive practices. The company has already been fined by regulators in China, South Korea, Taiwan, and the EU over the way it licenses its patents.

The battle is showing no sign of slowing, so read on for all of the latest news on this lengthy legal fight.

  • Chris Welch

    Sep 11, 2017

    Chris Welch

    Qualcomm claims Android always beats the iPhone to new features

    Qualcomm Snapdragon (STOCK)

    Qualcomm today published a somewhat self-congratulatory blog post that lauds the company and its Android partners for achieving a series of industry firsts that include wireless charging, dual-camera systems, OLED smartphone screens, edge-to-edge displays, and more.

    If you’ve been following recent Apple rumors and leaks, you know that those are all things we expect to see spread across the new iPhones that the company will unveil tomorrow. (Some of the features Qualcomm mentions have already appeared in previous iPhones, but the company is still calling “first!” for Android on everything.)

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  • Thuy Ong

    Jul 19, 2017

    Thuy Ong

    Apple joined by Foxconn and others in its fight with Qualcomm

    iPhone

    A group of Taiwanese manufacturers are joining Apple’s legal battle against Qualcomm in a countersuit, claiming the chipmaker charges excessive fees for patent licenses and violates anti-trust laws, according to The Wall Street Journal. Apple is covering the legal expenses associated with the companies’ defense, and said it would file a separate motion to consolidate the manufacturer’s countersuit with its own.

    Contract manufacturers Foxconn Technology, Compal Electronics, Pegatron Corp, and Wistron Corp had planned to file a lawsuit against Qualcomm in the Federal District Court in San Diego on Tuesday night. Notably, the companies assemble iPhones and iPads for Apple. Qualcomm is the market leader in smartphone modems and a primary supplier to Apple, yet Apple doesn’t have a direct patent deal with Qualcomm; it pays licensing fees to the four manufacturers who then pay Qualcomm. Apple stopped making payments to the four after it sued Qualcomm in January for $1 billion, thus making the manufacturers’ involvement in the legal tussle seemingly inevitable.

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  • Qualcomm is trying to ban iPhones from being sold in the US

    In the latest escalation of its global legal fight with Apple, Qualcomm is asking the US government to ban new iPhones from coming into the country. It also wants sales halted on iPhones that have already made their way in.

    Qualcomm says that Apple is violating six patents that have to do with extending a phone’s battery life. None of the patents are essential to a standard, Qualcomm says, which means it isn’t required to license them — as it is with the other patents the two companies are in disagreement over.

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  • Jacob Kastrenakes

    May 25, 2017

    Jacob Kastrenakes

    Qualcomm tells court that Apple is holding its payments ‘ransom’

    Latest Consumer Technology Products On Display At CES 2017
    Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

    Qualcomm is asking a court to force Apple’s iPhone and iPad manufacturers to pay up, since they’ve been withholding royalty payments for weeks under Apple’s instructions.

    In a court filing yesterday, Qualcomm asked for a preliminary injunction against four of Apple’s suppliers — Foxconn, Pegatron, Wistron, and Compal — all of which it began suing for breach of contract earlier this month. Qualcomm said in April that Apple had instructed those companies not to pay royalties for devices they made using Qualcomm technology. It later said that would lead to a loss of $500 million in revenue this quarter alone because of the missing payments.

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  • Jacob Kastrenakes

    May 17, 2017

    Jacob Kastrenakes

    Qualcomm sues Apple suppliers amid global patent battle

    Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

    Qualcomm is suing the four companies Apple uses to make iPhones and iPads for failing to provide royalty payments, after they received instructions from Apple not to pay.

    The lawsuit names Foxconn, Pegatron, Wistron, and Compal, all of which Qualcomm says have stopped paying royalties for patented technologies used in Apple’s products.

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  • Natt Garun

    May 15, 2017

    Natt Garun

    Samsung and Intel join FTC’s antitrust lawsuit against Qualcomm

    Qualcomm (STOCK)

    Qualcomm continues to have a rough start to the first half of the year after being sued by Apple and the United States Federal Trade Commission in separate lawsuits over anti-competitive practices. On Friday, Samsung and Intel both filed briefs backing the FTC in its case against Qualcomm, claiming they have been “harmed” by the misconduct.

    Although Samsung develops its own chips that compete with Qualcomm’s, it uses its competitor’s chips in its smartphones — such as the Snapdragon 835 processor in the Galaxy S8. “Despite having requested a license from Qualcomm, Samsung cannot sell licensed Exynos chipsets to non-Samsung entities because Qualcomm has refused to license Samsung to make and sell licensed chipsets,” Samsung said in its brief, calling Qualcomm’s actions “exclusionary.”

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  • Jacob Kastrenakes

    Apr 28, 2017

    Jacob Kastrenakes

    Apple won't pay Qualcomm any royalties during court battle

    Preview Of Upgraded Apple Store In Regent Street
    Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images

    Apple has stopped paying royalties to Qualcomm and says it won’t start paying again until their globe-spanning court battles are through.

    This is the latest escalation in Apple’s multi-part lawsuit against Qualcomm, which it claims has been charging excessively high patent licensing fees for years.

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  • Rich McCormick

    Apr 11, 2017

    Rich McCormick

    Qualcomm sues Apple for hobbling its iPhone chips to make Intel look better

    Newest Innovations In Consumer Technology On Display At 2014 International CES
    Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

    After Apple hit Qualcomm with a barrage of lawsuits earlier this year, the chipmaker is countersuing Apple right back. Qualcomm today filed its Answers and Counterclaims to Apple’s January lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of California. The full details of the suit can be read in a 139-page document (PDF) released by Qualcomm, but the company has five key complaints — including the claim that Apple deliberately didn’t use the full potential of Qualcomm chips in iPhone 7 phones so that they wouldn’t perform better than the modems provided by Intel.

    Qualcomm says that Apple “chose not to utilize certain high-performance features of the Qualcomm chipsets for the iPhone 7 (preventing consumers from enjoying the full extent of Qualcomm’s innovation),” and when Qualcomm iPhones supposedly outperformed Intel iPhones, “Apple falsely claimed that there was ‘no discernible difference’ between” the two variants.

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  • Apple tries for a hat trick with lawsuit against Qualcomm in third country

    Apple has escalated its legal war against Qualcomm with a fourth lawsuit, this time in the UK. Apple says the lawsuit was actually filed back in January, alongside the other three, but it’s only now being noticed due to a refiling.

    Details on the lawsuit are pretty vague at the moment, with Bloomberg reporting that the court has only said the case has something to do with patents and designs. But it seems safe to assume that it’s along the lines of the lawsuits Apple has filed against Qualcomm in the US and China.

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  • Lauren Goode

    Jan 31, 2017

    Lauren Goode

    Tim Cook says Apple had ‘no choice’ but to sue Qualcomm

    Tim Cook

    Apple chief executive Tim Cook said on the company’s quarterly earnings call today that he views litigation as a “last resort” but that Apple “didn’t see another way forward” in the company’s recent lawsuit against chip-maker Qualcomm.

    “You should take from our filing that we viewed it as, we didn’t see another way forward,” Cook said in response to an analyst’s question about the high-profile lawsuit. “[Qualcomm was] insisting on charging royalties for technologies that they had nothing to do with,” he said, claiming that as Apple innovated with new features like its TouchID fingerprint sensors or advanced displays and cameras, Qualcomm would collect money “for no reason.”

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  • Jacob Kastrenakes

    Jan 25, 2017

    Jacob Kastrenakes

    Apple continues antitrust fight with Qualcomm with two new lawsuits

    tim cook

    Apple is continuing its legal assault on Qualcomm with two new lawsuits filed today in Beijing.

    In the first lawsuit, Apple is seeking 1 billion yuan (over $145 million USD), according to Reuters, claiming that Qualcomm violated China’s anti-monopoly law and harmed it by abusing the company’s market position as a dominant chip supplier.

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  • Jacob Kastrenakes

    Jan 20, 2017

    Jacob Kastrenakes

    Apple sues Qualcomm for withholding $1 billion ‘as retaliation’

    Apple Holds Event To Announce New Products
    Photo by Stephen Lam/Getty Images

    Apple is suing Qualcomm for $1 billion, saying that the mobile chip maker has been dramatically overcharging it for the use of basic patents, according to CNBC.

    The lawsuit comes just days after the US Federal Trade Commission began suing Qualcomm for anti-competitive practices over the same issue. The commission said that Qualcomm had been forcing phone manufactures to pay “disproportionately high” fees for use of patents necessary to make a smartphone. This is exactly what Apple is arguing, too.

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  • Nilay Patel

    Jan 17, 2017

    Nilay Patel

    Qualcomm allegedly bribed Apple into not making a WiMAX iPhone

    LTE / WiMAX
    I have no idea where this image came from but it’s in our system so here it is.

    The FTC filed a blockbuster lawsuit against Qualcomm today, arguing that the chipmaker used its baseband processor patents to illegally force competitors out of the market. (The short version: the FTC says Qualcomm wouldn’t sell modems to any company that didn’t also agree to pay Qualcomm patent royalties on phones that used modems from other suppliers, which the agency refers to a the “no-license-no-chips” policy.)

    Anyway, a big part of the complaint has to do with Apple, and the fact that Qualcomm spent a lot of time working and reworking its deal with Cupertino to remain the exclusive provider of modems in the iPhone. Among the moves it made? The FTC says that in 2007, Qualcomm agreed to refund some of Apple’s patent royalty payments if Apple agreed not to make a WiMAX iPhone.

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  • Jacob Kastrenakes

    Jan 17, 2017

    Jacob Kastrenakes

    Qualcomm sued by US regulators for anti-competitive practices

    Latest Consumer Technology Products On Display At CES 2017
    Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

    Qualcomm is being sued by the United States Federal Trade Commission for anti-competitive practices relating to the way it sells modems for devices like smartphones.

    According to the FTC, Qualcomm used its dominant position as a modem supplier to muscle out competition by essentially giving smartphone manufacturers two choices: pay extra for use of its patents, or don’t make a widely available phone.

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  • Rich McCormick

    Feb 10, 2015

    Rich McCormick

    Qualcomm fined $975 million by Chinese anti-monopoly regulators

    David Becker/Getty Images

    Chip maker Qualcomm has been fined 6.088 billion yuan ($975 million) by the Chinese government after it was decided the company had violated anti-monopoly laws. Regulators from the country's National Development and Reform Commission reached the decision to fine the American chip maker after more than a year of investigation. Qualcomm says it will not dispute the huge fine.

    The result of the inquiry means the company has to part with almost a billion dollars, but it lets it keep its basic business model intact — with some concessions. Qualcomm makes the majority of its profit from licensing patents for chips to other companies. Under its previous operating procedures, Qualcomm would bundle a range of patents together, forcing companies interested in obtaining licenses to use 3G and 4G smartphone chips to also purchase other patents from the company's stables. Now Chinese regulations force the company to offer those 3G and 4G chip licenses without the costly extras. The company will also now adopt a licensing rate in line with royalty rates for the rest of the world.

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