Qualcomm Urges US Regulators To Reverse Course, Ban Some iPhones (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Qualcomm is urging U.S. trade regulators to reverse a judge's ruling and ban the import of some Apple iPhones in a long-running patent fight between the two companies. Qualcomm is seeking the ban in hopes of dealing Apple a blow before the two begin a major trial in mid-April in San Diego over Qualcomm's patent licensing practices. Qualcomm has sought to apply pressure to Apple with smaller legal challenges ahead of that trial and has won partial iPhone sales bans in China and Germany against Apple, forcing the iPhone maker to ship only phones with Qualcomm chips to some markets. Any possible ban on iPhone imports to the United States could be short-lived because Apple last week for the first time disclosed that it has found a software fix to avoid infringing on one of Qualcomm's patents. Apple asked regulators to give it as much as six months to prove that the fix works.

Qualcomm brought a case against Apple at the U.S. International Trade Commission in 2017 alleging that some iPhones violated Qualcomm patents to help smart phones run well without draining their batteries. Qualcomm asked for an import ban on some older iPhone models containing Intel chips. In September, Thomas Pender, an administrative law judge at the ITC, found that Apple violated one of the patents in the case but declined to issue a ban. Pender reasoned that imposing a ban on Intel-chipped iPhones would hand Qualcomm an effective monopoly on the U.S. market for modem chips, which connect smart phones to wireless data networks. Pender's ruling said that preserving competition in the modem chip market was in the public interest as speedier 5G networks come online in the next few years.

Comments

Reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing

[DontBeAMoran]

The core issue here is Reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing. Qualcomm has patents on what is considered to be the best (if not the only) way for that wireless stuff.

You may like or you may hate both Apple and/or Qualcomm, but let's discuss the real problem: is Qualcomm trying to screw Apple on the price because they're bigger than the other manufacturers, or is Apple trying to screw Qualcomm on the price because they're bigger than the other manufacturers?

Re:Reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing

[Solandri]

The dispute boils down to Qualcomm wanting a percentage of the total phone price as a licensing fee, Apple wanting to pay a percentage of the component (radio) price as a licensing fee. Ironically, this the same BS Apple tried to pull on Samsung. Apple wanted Samsung to pay them a percentage of the phone's price to license some of their patents, while paying Samsung only a few cents to license Samsung's FRAND patents since that fee was based on the component price. So in that respect, Apple is being hoisted by their own petard here.

In both cases, I am for licensing fees based on the component price. Which means I was against Apple in Apple vs Samsung, and am for Apple in Apple vs Qualcomm. Licensing fees based on a percentage of the total product price is stupid. If a company making $100,000 trucks decided to integrate cellular connectivity to allow the truck to constantly keep its location and status updated with the operating company, they'd end up having to pay Qualcomm thousands of dollars per truck to license a part that costs less than $10.

Pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I've read when the fracas started, so I may be wrong, but Qualcomm was selling Apple the base-band chips, AND wanted a cut of the sale price of the phone as a licensing fee. Which, of course, is insane, and an end-run around FRAND rules. If Qualcomm wants a bigger cut of the phone market then they can sell phones.

Re:Pricing

[dgatwood]

The patent in question, 9,535,490 is not nearly a "technology", though. If I skimmed it correctly, it amounts to basically this:

To save power, the device talking to the cellular modem should collect data for a period of time, and then send it as soon as the timer expires or when the cellular modem provides data in the other direction, whichever comes first, to reduce the number of times you have to power up the modem.

And for that trivial idea, Qualcomm wants $13 per device.

I'll let you ponder how bonkers this is for just a moment before noting that the patent in question also appears to basically be nothing more than an "on a cellular modem" version of Intel's 20100241880 Ethernet power management patent.

So not only is the idea trivial, it wasn't even original. Either:

• This idea is so obvious that it should not have been awarded a patent in the first place, having been "invented" by two unrelated people working on unrelated technologies within a few years of each other who probably knew nothing about each other's work, or
• Qualcomm knew that this management technique worked in for Ethernet, and decided to reword the idea in a way that would make it hard to spot using simple text searches and file a patent on its use with cellular modems.

Either way, IMO, they're using what should be an invalid patent to extort the entire industry.

F**k Qualcomm.