Roger Fingas
Further escalating the legal war between the two companies, Apple on Wednesday launched a U.S. countersuit against Qualcomm, charging that the latter's Snapdragon processors — found in many Android phones — are in violation of at least eight patents.
Apple initiated the action as a revised response to a Qualcomm suit, according to Reuters. In July, Qualcomm accused Apple of infringing several patents related to optimizing battery life. The Apple countersuit makes similar allegations, specifically saying that Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 and 820 chips violate patents related to reducing power consumption through improved sleep/wake functions and shutting off parts of a processor when they're unnecessary.
"Apple began seeking those patents years before Qualcomm began seeking the patents it asserts against Apple in this case," company lawyers said in a filing with the U.S. District Court in San Diego. The iPhone maker is pursuing unspecified damages as compensation.
Apple and Qualcomm are engaged in a number of worldwide legal actions, which kicked off in January when Apple sued Qualcomm for almost $1 billion in royalty rebates, allegedly withheld as retaliation for cooperating with South Korean antitrust investigators. Qualcomm has suffered financially as a result of Apple ordering suppliers not to pay royalties, though Apple is at risk of losing Chinese iPhone sales and manufacturing.
Any issues could become moot if Qualcomm is successfully acquired by Broadcom. The former has so far resisted, but Broadcom is allegedly prepared for a hostile takeover and willing to spend well over $100 billion.
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
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Amber Neely
18 Comments
Apple tend not to file patent infringement unless necessary.beyond reasons. Steve Jobs let slide many Apple patents violated by Microsoft Office and used against MS when he had to. After he returned back to Apple, he told Microsoft that you guys are walking all over many Apple patents in your office product so instead of settle in court lets work out. And he made Microsoft support MS Office on OSX for many years and Microsoft also invested over $100M in Apple in their need of finance. These counter law suit targets to the heart of Qualcomm's bread butter SOC. Qualcomm either backoff and work out with Apple or accept Broadcomm deal for buyout.
At some point the two companies will arrive at a settlement that involves a broad IP cross-licensing agreement. This is exactly why companies like Apple, Qualcomm, IBM, etc., stockpile huge numbers of patents on every subtle nuance of everything they can think of, whether or not they ever intend to build out products using the IP. Time to lay those chips on the table.
Hopefully every iPhone and iPad knockoff that uses these chips will pay a royalty to Apple.
Is the rendering of the Galaxy S7 Edge accurate? I assume that the images near the edge of the screen (e.g., the email icon) should be curved, right?