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Apple-Feature

Apple sued Qualcomm today, alleging that the mobile chip giant owes it at least a billion dollars in unpaid rebates and agreements. Apple further states that Qualcomm "attempted to extort Apple into changing its responses and providing imitation data to the KFTC [Korean FTC] in substitution for Qualcomm's release of those payments to Apple."

That'southward a bombshell accusation, if truthful. The Korean FTC recently fined Qualcomm $850 million, but an accusation that Qualcomm may have deliberately attempted to pay other corporations to lie on its behalf could open Qualcomm up to criminal lawsuits and accusations of perjury. China has as well fined Qualcomm for its alleged monopolistic abuses and the FTC filed a lawsuit confronting QC earlier this calendar week.

Apple tree provided Ars Technica with the following argument:

For many years Qualcomm has unfairly insisted on charging royalties for technologies they take nothing to do with. The more Apple innovates with unique features such equally TouchID, advanced displays, and cameras, to name simply a few, the more money Qualcomm collects for no reason and the more expensive it becomes for Apple to fund these innovations. Qualcomm built its concern on older, legacy standards but reinforces its dominance through exclusionary tactics and excessive royalties. Despite beingness just ane 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 nosotros have agreements with combined. To protect this business scheme Qualcomm has taken increasingly radical steps, nearly recently withholding about $1B in payments from Apple equally retaliation for responding truthfully to law enforcement agencies investigating them.

Apple believes deeply in innovation and we have always been willing to pay off-white and reasonable rates for patents we use. We are extremely disappointed in the fashion Qualcomm is conducting its business organisation with u.s. and unfortunately after years of disagreement over what constitutes a fair and reasonable royalty we have no pick left but to plow to the courts.

Amongst Apple's complaints, are allegations that it is forced to effectively double-pay Qualcomm, since Qualcomm requires Apple's manufacturing partners to take out a license to work with Snapdragon hardware, then charges Apple again for a split up license. According to Apple, Qualcomm sweetened the deal with rebates then long as Apple maintained exclusivity — which actually sounds a off-white bit like the rebate practices Intel used to artificially deny and reduce AMD's ability to win product designs from 2002 – 2006. In this case, nonetheless, information technology was Intel's modem that allowed Apple to pause Qualcomm'southward lock on its LTE business. This likewise explains why Apple used Intel in the first place, given that Intel's modem isn't as good as Qualcomm'due south according to objective assay.

Apple's accommodate alleges that Qualcomm breached its contracts, abused its monopoly ability, and violated California contract law. It likewise claims Apple was overcharged and required to license nine separate patents that Apple tree does not believe it infringed upon. If this example is annihilation similar the long-running Apple / Samsung litigation, it'll be years earlier it goes to trial and years subsequently that until a verdict and damages corporeality is settled — but throwing another lawsuit shines an unwelcome spotlight on its business practices and policies.