Qualcomm Says Apple Is $7 Billion Behind In Royalty Payments (bloomberg.com)

Last Friday in federal court, Qualcomm lawyer Evan Chesler said Apple is $7 billion dollars behind in royalties. "They're trying to destroy our business," he said. "The house is on fire and there is $7 billion of property damage right now." Bloomberg reports: Qualcomm wants as many as 56 patent-related claims and counterclaims cut from a lawsuit with Apple and its Asian manufacturers, arguing that these are just a sideshow to the broader licensing dispute between the companies. Apple, through its manufacturers, halted royalty payments to Qualcomm last year and the tech giants' showdown has escalated into some 100 legal proceedings around the world. Apple argues that Qualcomm is using its intellectual property to bully customers into paying excessive royalties even as it tries to duck scrutiny over whether its patents are valid. "You can't just let Qualcomm walk away from this," Apple's lawyer, Ruffin Cordell, told the judge at Friday's hearing.

Comments

Conflicted

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard to say which of these companies is more evil at this point.

Re:Conflicted

[mangastudent]

Hard to say which of these companies is more evil at this point.

Heh, although I'd put both at a lower tier of evil than a lot of the tech Left.

However, from what I've read elsewhere, this boils down to Apple claiming patent exhaustion. That is, when Intel makes chips based on Qualcomm's patents (and they did reduce a lot of the concepts to working technology), and pays them for that privilege, Qualcomm can't then try to extract further payments downstream. It's akin to the first sale doctrine with copyrights.

Re:Conflicted

[stealth_finger]

Hard to say which of these companies is more evil at this point.

It's Apple.

Re: Conflicted

[LynnwoodRooster]

Because that is $90 billion, and Apple is cheap. They could just pay the $7 billion in back royalties (royalties that Apple customers ultimately already paid for), and be done with it, too. But that's not the Apple way. The Apple way is to extort every penny you can out of the entire supply chain, let the rest of the industry do all the R&D/innovation, and then gallop in on unicorns and claim they invented it all for the betterment of all mankind at shockingly low prices (never mind they are over priced), because their legion of followers will accept whatever comes down the pipe as the Latest Greatest Thing.

Apple says they owe nothing

[gnasher719]

Actually, the matter is in court and a court will decide how much Apple owes. $7bn is not what Apple owes, itâ(TM)s what Qualcomm would want in their wildest dreams.