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Apple Sues Qualcomm For Roughly $1 Billion Over Royalties (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Apple is suing Qualcomm for roughly $1 billion, saying Qualcomm has been "charging royalties for technologies they have nothing to do with." The suit follows the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's lawsuit against Qualcomm earlier this week over unfair patent licensing practices. Apple says that Qualcomm has taken "radical steps," including "withholding nearly $1 billion in payments from Apple as retaliation for responding truthfully to law enforcement agencies investigating them." Apple added, "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." Apple also alleges that once it began cooperating with Korean authorities' antitrust investigation of Qualcomm, the company withheld $1 billion in retaliation. Korean regulators fined Qualcomm $854 million for unfair trade practices in December.
"The FTC claims that to prevent Apple from launching a WiMax iPhone after Sprint deployed its first WiMax network in 2008, Qualcomm 'agreed to rebate to Apple royalties' received from the iPhone maker's contract manufacturers 'in excess of a specified per-handset cap.' In other words, Qualcomm allegedly let Apple pay lower royalties to secure a long-term spot in the iPhone, lock rivals out of the baseband market, and deal a fatal blow to the WiMax standard."
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Doesn't this go both ways ?
That's a huuuuuge lawsuit.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Apple's highly innovative inventions, namely flat rectangle with a screen on it, and an arrangement of icons in a grid clearly constitute innovations of incalculable value. Where as Qualcomm's patents simply involve leading edge telecommunication developments that far surpass most of their rivals in performance. Obviously, nothing special. Surely not noteworthy enough for their extensive paten portfolio, one of the largest in the wireless world, to justify 5x the royalty rates.
When I've seen the name Qualcomm in news headlines, its technology related 50% of the time, and trade violations related 50% of the time. They are the smartphone processor market leader and they got it with cutthroat tactics. South Korea fined them over $800 million in December. http://www.anandtech.com/show/10942/south-korea-qualcomm-anti-trust-fine
for real, bonafide, genuine inventions in radio-communication (unlike their own go-sue material, shapes of buttons on a screen and what direction they slide in), and they refuse paying Ericsson simply because they are confident their dishonest American courts will side with them so they can get away with it.
A bunch of dishonest fuckers and hypocrites is what Apple's management are.
No more machines made for vegetarians. Give me my data truck.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
If Apple is the buyer of Qualcomm technologies, and purchases their modems etc, and additionally licenses their technologies, how can Qualcomm withhold *anything* much less a billion dollars? Isn't the exact opposite the case -- Apple owes Qualcomm and can withhold from them instead?
Apple is sitting on $300 billion because they are following the law and don't want to pay it out . Sounds like Qualcomm is also acting within the law while sitting on Apple's billion dollars and not wanting to pay it out.
Time to lie in it.
If Apple chose to do so, they could use their enormous wealth to lobby for patent reform. Since they have shown no signs of doing this, I have to assume that they are very happy with the current system, despite the phony outrage,
Funny how things turn out, isn't it?
Qualcomm has taken a few hits recently so Apple is taking as many cheap shots as they think they can get away with. Kicking Qualcomm while they are down because the sharks smell money.
(1) Get a legal judgment, (2) walk into their headquarters with the sheriff to start seizing their computers to auction to pay the judgment. Same thing I'd do with Trump if I ever had to deal with that scumbag.
They are just using their legal team to be as evil as possible on the front end and try to intimidate some other unnamed third parties. Now that they are starting to lose big on the back end as their ludicrous judgements are being overturned they fear widespread knowledge that they are intellectual pussies and may have to pay for their predatory practices.
If Apple is making regular royalty payments to Qualcomm. If so, how does this statement from Apple that QC is "withholding nearly $1 billion in payments from Apple as retaliation for..." make any sense? Is QC refusing to cash the check? Asking for bigger payments? Genuinely confused.
Get screen and memory free from Samsung,
Get System on Chip free from Qualcomm.
Profit!
Apple is no longer innovating and creating unique products that consumers want. If Qualcomm keeps doing what it does best, they can hopefully outpace the deluge of lawsuits & IP thefts from every side. Unfortunately, this seems to be the trend for any new technology from arduino kits to Raptors.
Namaste
Reading the argument that Apple attorneys have put forward presumes and assumes the FTC does not understand what Apple Inc. does and what patents and licensing are and how they are used by Apple Inc. for market lock-out and cash-flow because each point raised by the Apple attorneys can be used exactly against them and Apple Inc.
Therefore Qualcomm should sue Apple Inc. for $500 Billion dollars; approximately the sum of the cash Apple hoards in Chinese Communist Party Banks in Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai and the cash Apple hoards in Mafia controlled banks in Ireland, Netherlands and Italy.
Q.E.D.
Is anybody, like me, sick of all these patent squabbles?
Welcome to the 21st century shitpile.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.