Ninth Circuit allows Intel and Ericsson into Qualcomm antitrust suit
Technology company Intel and telecoms firm Ericsson, along with five others, have secured permission from the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to intervene in a class-action suit against Qualcomm.
Earlier this week, the Ninth Circuit granted the emergency motions, allowing Intel and Ericsson, along with Sprint Spectrum, MediaTek, Nokia, Motorola Mobility and Lenovo, into the claim brought by an estimated 250 million US phone buyers.
These buyers allegedly suffered an antitrust injury, because the cost of inflated patent royalties associated with licensing Qualcomm’s technologies was passed on to them.
The tech and telecoms companies filed the motions so they can ask the court to ensure that their motions, which allegedly contain highly confidential information, remain under seal.
“If Sprint is not allowed to file its motion to seal, non-public highly confidential Sprint business information revealing current and future strategies would be revealed to Sprint’s competitors, causing irreparable harm to Sprint,” said Sprint’s motion.
Qualcomm has claimed that an order from the US District Court for the Northern District of California, which certified the class of consumers, “improperly applied California antitrust law to a nationwide class despite directly contrary precedent” in the Ninth Circuit.
In January this year, the Ninth Circuit granted Qualcomm’s petition to appeal.
Since then, the US Department of Justice (DoJ), along with the states of Louisiana, Ohio and Texas, backed Qualcomm in an amicus brief.
“By applying California law to the claims of the millions of class members who made their purchases in states that do not allow them to recover, the district court flouted the views of these states and, consequently, basic principles of federalism, in a decision that could reach beyond antitrust law,” said the DoJ.
The consumer case was consolidated with the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) suit against Qualcomm in California.
In May this year, the district court sided with the FTC in the suit, finding that Qualcomm had engaged in anticompetitive patent licencing practices in order to maintain its monopoly over the mobile chip market.
The California court also ordered Qualcomm to renegotiate its licences with a number of rival chipmakers.
Shortly after, Qualcomm asked the court for a stay while it pursues an appeal, but the motion was rejected.
In July, the DoJ asked the Californian court to pause the enforcement of the antitrust ruling, citing support from the US Department of Energy and Department of Defense and arguing that Qualcomm played a key role in the efficiency of the departments.
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