Judge hands down mixed ruling for Apple and Qualcomm
A US judge has granted Qualcomm’s motion to dismiss Apple’s attempt to invalidate nine Qualcomm patents.
But Apple was also cleared of breaking unfair competition rules amid claims it had made threats to Qualcomm not to reveal the disparity in speeds between iPhones made with chips supplied by Intel and those by Qualcomm.
The ruling (pdf) was handed down at the US District Court for the Southern District of California yesterday, November 8, by District Judge Gonzalo Curiel.
Apple sued Qualcomm in the US in January this year, accusing the company of abusing its monopoly in the mobile device market to gain unfair royalties from Apple’s inventions. Both sides have since made a range of claims and counterclaims.
For each of the nine patents, Apple sought a declaration of non-infringement, invalidity, or for the court to set a fair reasonable and non-discriminatory royalty.
“Here, the complete absence of detailed infringement analysis as to the additional patents-in-suit weighs severely against finding declaratory judgment jurisdiction,” added Curiel as he granted Qualcomm’s motion to dismiss Apple’s claims.
Qualcomm had also stated that Apple had broken Californian unfair competition laws by first attempting to “cover up” performance differences between Qualcomm and Intel-based iPhone 7 models.
The company also stated that Apple had publicly claimed there was “no discernible difference” between these models as well as threatening Qualcomm to prevent consumers from “insisting on the superior Qualcomm-based iPhones”.
However, the court dismissed the claims that Apple had attempted to cover up the performance differences between the Qualcomm and Intel phones and that Apple publically misrepresented that there was no “discernible difference” between the phones.
Earlier this week, Qualcomm confirmed it had received a $130 billion takeover bid from Broadcom, a deal which lawyers told WIPR could depend on the Apple litigation.
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