Legal Warfare Between Apple and Qualcomm Continues

It appears as if the legal proceedings between Apple and one of the world’s most prominent chip manufacturers, Qualcomm, has continued to metastasize the globe unabated, according to a report published yesterday by Bloomberg, which alleges that Cupertino has lodged yet another case against the San Diego, California-based chip-maker in the U.K. Thursday afternoon.

Additional information about the new proceedings are scarce at this time, however, with court records indicating that Apple’s complaint — which cites only “patents and designs” as its primary rationale — was filed on Thursday, March 2nd; while Apple alleges that the complaint was actually filed back on January 23rd. Meanwhile, as these constituents marinate in their petty game of he-said-she-said, poor Qualcomm is saying that it hadn’t even seen the complaint yet, and therefore declined to issue a comment.

While Qualcomm is best known for being a chip-maker, with its proprietary line of Snapdragon SoC’s for mobile devices, as well as various modems for smartphone and computer-makers around the globe, a greater bulk of the company’s annual profits are generated via a separate licensing business. And that’s where many of the current disputes seem to be focused.

For instance, back on January 20th of this year, the Federal Trade Commission lodged a whopping $1 billion injunction against Qualcomm, supported by Apple in California, which accused the chip-maker of “monopolizing the market for chips for wireless devices.”

Within a matter of just days after that case was filed in California, Apple independently slapped Qualcomm with yet another, $145 million complaint — this time, filed in Beijing, China — for allegedly abusing its prominence in the global chip industry, which Apple asserts is in direct violation of Chinese anti-monopoly law.

When reached for comment by Bloomberg in regards to Thursday’s court filings in the U.K., Apple referred only to a public statement that the company issued on January 20th, 2017, citing that Qualcomm has insisted on charging unsubstantiated royalties on various technologies the chip-maker has nothing to do with.

“Qualcomm built its business on older, legacy, standards but reinforces its dominance through exclusionary tactics and excessive royalties,” Apple’s statement reads, in part. “Despite being just one of over a dozen companies who contributed to basic cellular standards, Qualcomm insists on charging Apple at least five times more in payments than all the other cellular patent licensors we have agreements with combined.”

Meanwhile, as all three of these cases continue to forge on, Qualcomm is dichotomously being investigated by a number of leading world powers — by the European Union and Taiwan, respectively; while South Korea slapped the Snapdragon-supernova with a heaping 1.03 trillion won ($902 million) fine last December over what antitrust regulators alleged were monopolistic practices.