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Apple-Feature

Apple sued Qualcomm today, alleging that the mobile flake giant owes it at least a billion dollars in unpaid rebates and agreements. Apple further states that Qualcomm "attempted to extort Apple into changing its responses and providing false information to the KFTC [Korean FTC] in exchange for Qualcomm'due south release of those payments to Apple."

That's a bombshell accusation, if true. The Korean FTC recently fined Qualcomm $850 1000000, simply an accusation that Qualcomm may have deliberately attempted to pay other corporations to lie on its behalf could open Qualcomm up to criminal lawsuits and accusations of perjury. China has also fined Qualcomm for its alleged monopolistic abuses and the FTC filed a lawsuit against QC earlier this calendar week.

Apple tree provided Ars Technica with the following argument:

For many years Qualcomm has unfairly insisted on charging royalties for technologies they have nothing to practise with. The more Apple tree innovates with unique features such every bit TouchID, avant-garde displays, and cameras, to name just a few, the more money Qualcomm collects for no reason and the more expensive it becomes for Apple to fund these innovations. Qualcomm built its business on older, legacy standards just reinforces its dominance through exclusionary tactics and excessive royalties. Despite existence just 1 of over a dozen companies who contributed to bones cellular standards, Qualcomm insists on charging Apple at least v times more in payments than all the other cellular patent licensors nosotros have agreements with combined. To protect this business scheme Qualcomm has taken increasingly radical steps, virtually recently withholding nearly $1B in payments from Apple as retaliation for responding truthfully to police force enforcement agencies investigating them.

Apple believes deeply in innovation and we have always been willing to pay off-white and reasonable rates for patents we use. We are extremely disappointed in the way Qualcomm is conducting its business with us and unfortunately afterwards years of disagreement over what constitutes a off-white and reasonable royalty nosotros have no choice left but to turn to the courts.

Among Apple'south complaints, are allegations that it is forced to effectively double-pay Qualcomm, since Qualcomm requires Apple'south manufacturing partners to take out a license to work with Snapdragon hardware, and then charges Apple again for a separate license. Co-ordinate to Apple, Qualcomm sweetened the deal with rebates and so long every bit Apple tree maintained exclusivity — which actually sounds a fair flake like the rebate practices Intel used to artificially deny and reduce AMD's ability to win production designs from 2002 – 2006. In this case, nevertheless, it was Intel's modem that allowed Apple tree to pause Qualcomm'due south lock on its LTE business concern. This also explains why Apple used Intel in the first place, given that Intel'due south modem isn't equally good as Qualcomm's co-ordinate to objective analysis.

Apple's arrange alleges that Qualcomm breached its contracts, abused its monopoly ability, and violated California contract law. It also claims Apple tree was overcharged and required to license nine separate patents that Apple does not believe it infringed upon. If this case is anything like the long-running Apple tree / Samsung litigation, it'll be years before information technology goes to trial and years after that until a verdict and amercement corporeality is settled — but throwing another lawsuit shines an unwelcome spotlight on its concern practices and policies.