A California federal judge said Apple didn’t breach an agreement not to snitch on Qualcomm when it cooperated with investigations into the chipmaker’s licensing practices, declining to release Qualcomm from making payments under the agreement in an order unsealed Thursday, reports Law360.
Also, yesterday, Apple obtained a summary judgement against Qualcomm. No breach of contract by responding to antitrust regulators was found, reports FOSS Patents. The decision could cost Qualcomm billions of dollars it’s seeking from Apple.
These development are part of an ongoing legal battle that goes back more than two years. In January 2017 Apple sued Qualcomm, alleging the chip supplier demanded unfair terms for its technology (which the company, of course, denied). Around the same time, the Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint in a federal district court charging the supplier of baseband processors with using anticompetitive tactics to maintain its monopoly in the supply of a key semiconductor device used in cell phones and other consumer products.
Qualcomm claims it went out of its way to offer alternative licensing (which Apple rejected), and that, in suing Qualcomm, Apple is motivated by reducing the cost to make iPhones.
