Qualcomm Inc. filed lawsuits in China against Apple in its continuing legal battle over patents. The ban would stop Apple from manufacturing and selling iPhones in the Asian country.
Both American companies went back fighting for the payments of its technology. The San Diego-based Qualcomm wants to kick Apple out of the world’s largest market – precisely where most of the iPhones are made. These lawsuits came after the Cupertino-based company did the same in January, filling a $1 billion lawsuit against Qualcomm. Since the battle started, Qualcomm has lost around 19 percent of its stock.
“The reason that we’re pursuing this is that Qualcomm‘s trying to charge Apple a percentage of the total iPhone value, and they do some great work around standards-essential patents, but it’s one small part of what an iPhone is,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said earlier this year.
Apple seems pretty sure that the suit won’t affect the company in any way. As Josh Rosenstock, Apple’s spokesman said the company believes that the latest legal effort “will fail,” like their other “courtroom maneuvers.”
However, there might be other things that Apple has not said about its sells. On August, the U.S. International Trade Commission claimed that the company is violating some of its patents on the technology of some iPhones.
Apple said in a statement this week that the company has been negotiating with Qualcomm for “many years” ago, and all of those patents were “never” discussed. The spokesperson also said that the same patents were “only granted in the last few months.”
Qualcomm strikes back
Qualcomm is known for being one of the biggest chip producers – like the well celebrated Snapdragon. This Snapdragon 835 chip is present in many excellent phones, as Google’s new Pixel phone. This company wants to charge a percentage of the iPhones’ total price as a licensing fee for its patents and is fighting very hard to achieve its goal.
Qualcomm filed the suits on Friday in a Beijing intellectual property court, according to Christine Trimble, a company spokeswoman. If China passes the lawsuits and bans Apple from making iPhones in the country, it would be cutting off almost two-thirds of Apple’s total revenue.
Trimble assures that Apple employs technologies invented by Qualcomm “without paying for them.” She did not provide further information about the demand.
Qualcomm’s suits are based on three non-standard essential patents. They cover the management of the power and a technology called Force Touch used on the touch-screen of the current iPhones, as Qualcomm said. According to Trimble, these are just a few examples “of the many Qualcomm technologies” that the Cupertino-based company uses to “improve its devices and increase its profits.”
Mike Walkley, an analyst at Canaccord Genuity Inc., said that Qualcomm is looking to get Apple back on the negotiation table. However, he doesn’t know if China’s court is going to apply for further actions on the US company request.
The Beijing court has still not made public the filling yet.
Source: Bloomberg