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

Posted by BeauHD on from the behind-schedule dept.

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.

2 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Who to believe? by reanjr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Do you believe the company who essentially invented wireless technology or do you believe the company that invented rounded corners?

    1. Re:Who to believe? by Anubis+IV · · Score: 3, Interesting

      How about believing both sides? It's an uncontested fact that Apple is withholding payments. Both sides will tell you that. What the reporting here is creatively omitting, however, is any mention of the fact that Apple received permission from the court to place the contested payments, with interest, in an escrow account until the case is resolved, which is standard practice in situations such as these.

      Keep in mind how this case started: Qualcomm failed to pay Apple $1 billion in rebates that were owed, seemingly for no reason at all. Those rebates were supposed to cover the fact that Qualcomm was double-dipping with their licensing fees by charging Apple's manufacturers a licensing fee (which then got passed on to Apple) for the right to manufacturer, then charging Apple a licensing fee for the right to sell the exact same IP. So long as Qualcomm kept making those rebate payments, Apple didn't complain. It was only when Qualcomm stopped making those payments that Apple sued for what they were owed and petitioned the court to let them keep the funds in escrow until the conclusion of the case. When Qualcomm pushed back, Apple raised the stakes by using recently-established precedent regarding patent exhaustion to assert that Qualcomm never had the right to demand those payments from Apple in the first place.

      But hey, don't let me stop you from relying on logical fallacies to make up your mind. Appeals to authority can be fun. Loaded questions too. To each their own.