Apple sue Qualcomm for US$ 1,000 million for “collecting royalties related to technologies that have nothing to do,” said the giant from Cupertino on Friday.
The lawsuit is because Qualcomm charges royalties for technology companies that use some form of their standards patented. “Qualcomm reinforces its dominance through tactics of exclusion and high fees for patents,” says Apple in a statement sent to CNET.
The demand of Apple follows in the footsteps of the lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC, for its acronym in English), in which it accuses Qualcomm, manufacturer of processors for mobile phones largest in the world, to maintain a monopoly on the chips for mobile phones through a policy of “no license, no chips”.
Qualcomm provides the chips for LTE for the iPhone, and until the year 2016, the manufacturer was the sole provider of these chips. From the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, Apple uses chips from Qualcomm and Intel.
The demand is at the root of the previous years in which, supposedly, Qualcomm forced Apple to use its processors exclusively. Qualcomm, every phone of the apple with their processors, they would receive a percentage.
“despite the fact that it is only a company of a dozen companies that have contributed to the standards for basic cellular, Qualcomm insists on charging Apple at least five times more in payments than the rest of the companies combined with which we have agreements,” says Apple in the lawsuit.
the lawsuit is The latest episode in a series of acts of scrutiny for activities anti-monopoly has faced Qualcomm in recent years. Last month, the Fair Trade Commission of South Korea imposed on the manufacturer of chips a fine of US$ 850 million to maintain “a business model that is unfair,” and to create with their practices a monopoly. In February, China fined Qualcomm with almost US$ 1,000 million as part of a prolonged antitrust investigation on the company.
In a complaint with a harsh wording (PDF), the FTC said that the patent that had Qualcomm were essential patent standard; that is, technology that is essential for the industry and must be licensed to their competitors on terms that are non-discriminatory, reasonable and fair (FRAND, for its acronym in English). But the complaint alleges that Qualcomm refused consistently to license some patents essential standard of its rival chipset manufacturers, thus lacking its commitments to FRAND.
“customers of Qualcomm have agreed to higher royalties and other license terms that do not reflect an assessment of terms that a court or a neutral arbitrator would determine as fair and reasonable,” said the FTC in its complaint.
With the collaboration of Steven Musil.
No comments:
Post a Comment