Qualcomm Seeks To Ban Imports And Sales of Apple iPhones in New Lawsuit (cnbc.com)

Chipmaker Qualcomm is asking U.S. trade regulators to ban iPhone imports, according to a new lawsuit. From a report: Apple has allegedly infringed on six of Qualcomm's patents, including technology that improves iPhone battery life, according to Qualcomm. Now Qualcomm wants Apple to pay damages. "Apple continues to use Qualcomm's technology while refusing to pay for it," Don Rosenberg, executive vice president and general counsel of Qualcomm, said in a statement. Qualcomm ultimately wants regulators to investigate which phones use cellular processors from Qualcomm's competitors, and halt sales of iPhones that violate the patents. Qualcomm said it has filed complaints in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California and with the United States International Trade Commission. It's not immediately clear how many iPhones that would affect.

Comments

How many? Perhaps none.

[Penguinisto]

Depends on how credible their claim is, really.

I suspect this is just a negotiating chip more than anything else, to push Apple into giving them the rent they seek.

(geddit... chip? I slay me sometimes.)

Re:How many? Perhaps none.

[Anonymous Coward]

In fairness, this is the karma train hitting Apple. They tried to pull this same shit with Samsung over goddamn rounded corners.

Re:How many? Perhaps none.

[Penguinisto]

Not really - there's a difference between Samsung directly ripping off a design patent, and Apple being sued for buying chips for their phones from someone other than Qualcomm.

Re:How many? Perhaps none.

[BronsCon]

This. Especially since the chip manufacturer would already have paid Qualcomm to license their technology, otherwise the chip manufacturer would be the one being sued or Apple would be willing to pay Qualcomm directly as part of their agreement with said chip manufacturer.

Re:How many? Perhaps none.

[LynnwoodRooster]

Uh, no. I don't know how many chip licenses you've negotiated, I've done more than my fair share. You buy the chips - but the firmware, the stuff that runs inside them - is typically an additional license that must be negotiated and paid for. That's true with Qualcomm, CSR (before Qualcomm bought them), Atmel, Cirrus, Analog Devices, TI, ST and many others... You buy the chip, but you still have to pay for licenses for any embedded firmware you choose to use.

Re:How many? Perhaps none.

[kimvette]

> there's a difference between Samsung directly ripping off a design patent, and Apple being sued for buying chips for their phones from someone other than Qualcomm.

There are Samsung "rounded corner" devices which predate Apple's bullshit "design patent"

SSDD

[swimboy]

This is the same argument that it's always been. Qualcomm has patents that are necessary to use cellular networks, and in return for making them standards, they've agreed to license them (either in their chips or their competitors) for "reasonable" amounts of money. Unfortunately for Apple, Qualcomm is trying to charge a license for a percentage of the final value of the phone, instead of a unit price per radio. They've been in court several times to determine if Qualcomm is being "reasonable" or not.

It seems a pretty specious argument to me. Just like the article says, you don't charge somebody more for a sofa just because they want to put it in a more expensive house.

Re:SSDD

[Bing Tsher E]

It's my understanding that the patents that Qualcomm is contesting Apple using IP from are not the ones agreed upon to be placed under the 'common license'. Apple is going beyond that point and using Qualcomm IP that isn't licensed that way to other Qualcomm customers either.

However, Apple is involved, so people will climb out of Steve Jobs grave (where they live) to raise a hue and cry.

Re:SSDD

[jonsmirl]

You are confused. Qualcomm is mad that their monopoly at Apple is being broken up by Apple using Intel's cell modems. So to get back at Apple the are accusing Apple patent infringement in another part of the iPhone developed by Apple, not Intel.

Personally I am very tired of the damage patent monopolies are doing to the US cell phone market. There are 100+ makers of cell phones in China. Only six or seven manufacturers sell in the US. LTE modems for the Chinese LTE bands are $15, same modem of US bands are $60. Average US cellphone pays $35 in patent royalties. Major cell phone companies like Xiaomi won't even enter the US market. in 2012 one sixth of all US patents were on cell phones.

And the future is bleak. All of these patents serve to keep US cell prices very high compared to rest of the world. This is going to end up destroying the developing market for cell connected IOT devices. The patent mess and high prices as so bad that completely independent cell technology (LORA/SIGFOX) is being developed to bypass the existing cell network.

Re:SSDD

[rsmith-mac]

If so, why does the secondary user of the chip (Apple) also have to pay licensing fees?

Because Qualcomm says so.

No, seriously. Qualcomm's position is that every step in the production chain that includes their IP/hardware needs to be individually licensed. Because company X makes a board that includes Qualcomm's IP, and then sells that board to company Y who makes a phone from it and sells said phone, then both X and Y need to be licensed.

It's a scenario that has been called into question many times before over the years. However no case has made it to trial to decide it and set any kind of precedent. In the meantime, because both X and Y technically have products that utilize Qualcomm's IP, both face the risk of an infringement suit if they don't pay royalties.

Probably the closest we came to that was NVIDIA's suit against Samsung and Qualcomm, which along with establishing IP infringement was attempting to sort out who is responsible for said infringement (is it the company who fabs the chips, or the company who designs the IP?). However since that case imploded spectacularly, the question was never answered.

Re:SSDD

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. The US should have just done what China does: wait for someone else to go to the expense of actually inventing and developing something, then copy it without paying the inventors anything. Then just think of how 'advanced' the US cell phones would be!

Re:SSDD

[crtreece]

This is going to end up destroying the developing market for cell connected IOT devices.

I guess it's not all bad then.

Re:SSDD

[BronsCon]

Because the manufacturers of the chips the use in their phones have already paid those several dollars per unit per patent and passed that cost along to Apple in their unit pricing. In short, Apple has already paid it once, when they bought the chips, and rightly does not feel they should have to pay it again.

Re:SSDD

[dgatwood]

No, seriously. Qualcomm's position is that every step in the production chain that includes their IP/hardware needs to be individually licensed. Because company X makes a board that includes Qualcomm's IP, and then sells that board to company Y who makes a phone from it and sells said phone, then both X and Y need to be licensed.

How is this not an open-and-shut case of patent exhaustion?

Re:SSDD

[Areyoukiddingme]

No, seriously. Qualcomm's position is that every step in the production chain that includes their IP/hardware needs to be individually licensed. Because company X makes a board that includes Qualcomm's IP, and then sells that board to company Y who makes a phone from it and sells said phone, then both X and Y need to be licensed.

How is this not an open-and-shut case of patent exhaustion?

It is. And the Supreme Court has gotten tired of the Federal Circuit that keeps trying to maintain the fiction that it isn't. So they ruled in May. Qualcomm apparently didn't get the memo. They don't have a leg to stand on. The brief required to scuttle their entire suit, and dismiss with prejudice, is one page long and cites that link.

Re:SSDD

[LynnwoodRooster]

A citation for you.

The six patents, U.S. Patent No. 8,633,936, U.S. Patent No. 8,698,558, U.S. Patent No. 8,487,658, U.S. Patent No. 8,838,949, U.S. Patent No. 9,535,490, and U.S. Patent No. 9,608,675 enable high performance in a smartphone while extending battery life. Each of the patents does so in a different way for different popular smartphone features; https://www.qualcomm.com/iphon... While the technologies covered by the patents are central to the performance of the iPhone, the six asserted patents are not essential to practice any standards in a mobile device or subject to a commitment to offer to license such patents.

These are not in the general patent common license pool, are not of any standards required for mobile devices, but Apple wants them anyway and is using them without paying for them.

Re:Both hate.

[Gr8Apes]

The explicitly stated purpose for patents is to give a [temporary] monopoly in return for publicly documenting inventions.

Correction...

[BronsCon]

Apple continues to use Qualcomm's technology while refusing to pay for it twice

Someone makes the chips Apple uses in their phones. Those chips implement Qualcomm's patented technologies and whoever makes them, therefore, must be licensing those technologies, which means they're paying for them and passing that cost along to Apple who, by paying for the chips which incorporate Qualcomm's technologies, made by the company who already paid for Qualcomm's technologies, has already paid for the use of Qualcomm's technologies.

I realize that's hard for some people (namely Qualcomm's leadership and council) to follow, so let's look at a similar situation with a different type of product.

Coca-Cola uses high fructose corn syrup in their products. They buy this high fructose corn syrup from a supplier. They pay for this high fructose corn syrup when they buy it, then they incorporate it into their products, which they then sell to stores. The stores, then, sell the products to consumers. The stores do not owe the high fructose corn syrup manufacturer anything for the use and sale of their product, because Coca-Cola already paid for that.

Rephrased to fit the Qualcomm situation, with edits bolded to make them clear:

Chip manufacturers use Qualcomm technologies in their products. They license these Qualcomm technologies from a Qualcomm. They pay for these Qualcomm technologies when they license them, then they incorporate them into their products, which they then sell to Apple. Apple, then, sells the products to consumers. Apple does not owe Qualcomm anything for the use and sale of their technologies, because the chip manufacturers already paid for that.

Re:I think a temporary ban would be hilarious

[BronsCon]

You do realize that you can now run an full Ubuntu environment within Windows, right? Last I checked, Windows will run Word and Excel natively, too. Cygwin is so 2015.