Judge sanctions Apple for failing to turn over documents in FTC case vs. Qualcomm

A U.S. judge has approved sanctions against Apple, ordering the iPhone maker pay $25,000 for every day it doesn't produce requested documents in a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit against Qualcomm.

Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins ordered Apple to produce evidence starting Dec. 16, Bloomberg said on Friday. If it's still non-compliant after Dec. 29, the company will face even stiffer penalties.

In a filing earlier this month, Apple said that it had already produced over 2.6 million documents by a Dec. 15 deadline, and that Qualcomm would be jumping the gun with any complaint. The company echoed that sentiment today in a statement to Bloomberg.

"We have already produced millions of documents for this case and are working hard to deliver the millions more which have been requested in an unprecedented time frame," said spokesman Josh Rosenstock. "We plan to appeal this ruling."

The FTC lawsuit was first launched in January, accusing Qualcomm of forcing Apple into an exclusive baseband chip deal in exchange for lower patent royalties. That deal expired last year.

Since then, Apple and Qualcomm have launched a number of lawsuits and other legal actions against each other. Further complicating the matter is the potential of Broadcom buying out Qualcomm, though the latter has been resistant so far.

15 Comments

anantksundaram 20389 comments · 18 Years

About 6 years ago

Wtf is wrong is Apple’s legal team!? Judging by results in high-profile cases (e.g, Samsung, iBooks, Qualcomm), they seem to be muddling through a lot.

Apple can, however, hope that Broadcom’s bid for Qualcomm succeeds.

brakken 687 comments · 11 Years

What these idiots fail to understand is, that if they succeed in destroying Apple, then they won’t be able to keep using their iPhones.

I expect we’ll now have to enact bills on how many documents can be ordered in ehat timeframe.

saltyzip 193 comments · 10 Years

Apples next iPhone to cost £2000 to pay for all the cockups and legal issues they have gotten themselves into this year.

Soli 9981 comments · 9 Years

saltyzip said:

Apples next iPhone to cost £2000 to pay for all the cockups and legal issues they have gotten themselves into this year.

For Apple's fiscal 4th quarter in 2017 the ASP was $618 USD (£462.50, unadjusted).) That would be an increase in per device cost of $2,054.44 (assuming you mean the sale price and not what it costs Apple to produce an iPhone) to get to £2000.

With a cost per day for not producing the requested documents at $25,000 (£18,709.50) and 46.7 million iPhones sold Apple would be able to hold out on supplying those documents for over 3.8 million days (46.700.000 × 2,054.44 ÷ 25,000) or 10.5 thousand years (3,837,693.92 ÷ 365). To put that into perceptive, the oldest cuneiform script is only about that half that age.

Note, that's only for one quarter of sales, and one of their weakest quarters for for the year.

tl:dr: This won't affect the sale price in any noticeable way.

Rayz2016 6957 comments · 8 Years

saltyzip said:

Apples next iPhone to cost £2000 to pay for all the cockups and legal issues they have gotten themselves into this year.

And it’ll still sell by the trainload.