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A US federal judge ruled that chip maker Qualcomm was to hand over some of its modem technology patents to competing chip makers, such as Intel and Apple.
In a preliminary ruling, the court declared that Qualcomm had filed a number of essential patents. to license wireless modems to competitors, writes Reuters. After reviewing the contracts, the judge concluded that if Qualcomm were allowed to retain these essential patents themselves, the chip maker would gain a monopoly in the modem chip market and would restrict competing implementations with these components too much.
This is a lawsuit brought by Qualcomm by the US Federal Trade Commission in early 2017, in which the regulator accuses the chip maker of anti-competitive behavior. Despite the preliminary ruling, the judge has not yet ruled on the broader central issue of whether Qualcomm has acted restrictively to retain the monopoly of modem technology in smartphones. The FTC and Qualcomm asked the court to postpone the interim 30-day ruling to reach a settlement, but this claim was rejected.
Qualcomm has been involved for some time in legal actions in which the company is accused of anti-competitive behavior. of his patents. For example, the Taiwanese regulator Qualcomm has accused the misuse of patents in the field of mobile networks, although the chip maker has finally managed to pay a fine of 584 million euros.
Meanwhile, Qualcomm has also been in conflict with Apple for some time, The question is whether Qualcomm asks too much money for its patents. In September, Qualcomm claimed that Apple had stolen information on modems and sent them to Intel. This concerns whether Qualcomm's diagnostic tools should also have been used to optimize Intel modems. For the iPhone XS and XS Max, Apple only uses Intel modems for the first time.
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