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4 July 2019Patents

Judge denies Qualcomm motion to stay antitrust ruling

A US court has dismissed Qualcomm’s request to stay an antitrust injunction handed down earlier this year, as the chipmaker looks to appeal the ruling.

The US District Court for the Northern District of California had previously ruled that Qualcomm’s standard-essential patent (SEP) licensing practices violated US antitrust laws, and imposed an injunction on the microchip maker.

Qualcomm claimed that the injunction was unfair and would force it to offer “exhaustive licences” on its SEPs.

The technology company plans to appeal against the decision to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and had requested that the court stay the injunction while that process continued.

Qualcomm argued that it would have to abide by any new licensing agreements it signed while the injunction was active, even if it was successful in overturning the court’s ruling on appeal.

In court documents filed yesterday, July 3, Judge Lucy Koh struck down several pieces of evidence which Qualcomm had sought to raise in its defence and denied the microchip maker’s application to stay the ruling.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which brought the lawsuit against Qualcomm, had urged the court to reject Qualcomm’s motion to stay.

The FTC was joined by LG Electronics and ACT | The App Association, who filed amicus briefs opposing Qualcomm’s request.

In the latest order, Koh also struck from the record pieces of evidence which Qualcomm had sought to raise in its defence.

As part of its evidence in support of the motion to stay, Qualcomm submitted the slide deck of its opening argument in the company’s patent licensing dispute with Apple, which was settled earlier this year.

According to Qualcomm, the slide deck contained excerpts from what it said was an internal Apple document which it said showed intent to “devalue SEPs”.

Koh ordered that the exhibit be struck from the record, as Qualcomm had failed to raise it at trial in the present FTC case or at any other point during proceedings to date.

In her order, Koh said that Qualcomm had cited only one page from the document in its submission supporting its motion to stay. Despite this, Qualcomm "improperly" sought to have the entire slide deck entered into the record, she said.

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More on this story

Patents
29 May 2019   Telecoms equipment company Qualcomm has asked a district court to stay a decision that Qualcomm’s patent licencing practices were illegal and “strangled competition”, as it plans to file an appeal.
Patents
23 May 2019   A US court has found that Qualcomm’s “no licence, no chips” business practice violates antitrust laws and gives the mobile chip maker an unlawfully dominant position in the market.
Patents
18 July 2019   The US Department of Justice has asked a US court to pause the enforcement of an earlier antitrust ruling against Qualcomm.