Qualcomm, the predominant smartphone chipset manufacturer has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple on Thursday (06/07/2017). The legal war between these two tech giants began back in January this year with Apple. They filed a lawsuit that accused Qualcomm of abusing their market power to demand royalties.
Apple allegedly made six patent infringements, including the one that improves the battery life on iPhones. As a payback, Qualcomm wants to see some of the iPhones out of the market.
Qualcomm Files a Patent Infringement Lawsuit against Apple
With the new lawsuit, Qualcomm wants the officials to investigate the iPhones, using their technologies and ban them right away. The company stated that they made such a bold move as Apple kept on using the features and refused to pay the money.
They have filed two complaints with the United States International Trade Commission and in the District Court for the Southern District of California. In the first one, Qualcomm aims at taking down the import of iPhones, which infringe their patents manufactured in China. The second one seeks to level the damage from the allegations. At this moment, we have no idea which phones will get affected. If the verdict favors Qualcomm, we will see iPhone import ban.
Apple responded to the latest actions saying they respect the treatment of intellectual properties and in this case, Qualcomm has nothing to do with the thousands of salient features of iPhone (touch ID, display, etc.). Instead, they adopted a very small part of features from Qualcomm that doesn’t even apply to all the devices out there.
Apple was even ready to pay for the adopted technologies. The negotiation went wrong because Qualcomm obviously asked for more than the proposed amount.
Also Read:- Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 has been unveiled at MWC 2017 by Qualcomm Technologies Inc.
The lawsuit Apple filed sued the chipset maker for $1 billion because of the alleged misuse of their market power. Qualcomm hopes some new technologies like 5G keeps them ahead of the competition. Nonetheless, the fight would only make their hopes tough to achieve.
On the other hand, Qualcomm’s turnover will find a lower margin if Apple delays the payment for the third quarter and in the current scenario, Apple has the stand that court should decide what the payment is.
Apple’s CEO compared the practices of Qualcomm with the situation of buying a sofa from a company, which fixes the price of it according to the buyer’s house.
Apple has reportedly minimized Qualcomm’s contributions to their smartphones. Still, Steve Jobs’ firm used the chip-based modems from them for enabling iPhones to communicate with telecom networks.
