Apple, Qualcomm Settle Royalty Dispute (cnbc.com) 59
Apple and Qualcomm have settled their royalty dispute, the companies said on Tuesday. From a report: The settlement includes a payment from Apple to Qualcomm as well as a chipset supply agreement, suggesting that future iPhone may use Qualcomm chips. The two companies started proceedings in a trial in federal court in San Diego on Monday, which was expected to last until May. Both sides were asking for billions in damages. In November, Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf said that he believed that the two companies were on the "doorstep" to settling. Apple CEO Tim Cook contradicted him shortly after, saying that Apple hasn't been in settlement discussions since the third calendar quarter of 2018.
The complicated legal battle centered around modem chips and had been raging in courts around the world since 2016. For years, Apple bought modem chips from Qualcomm, but chafed under Qualcomm's prices and requirement that any company using its chips would also pay licensing fees for its patents. New iPhone models released in 2018 used Intel modem chips, and Apple said in a previous FTC trial that Qualcomm. UPDATE: Intel announced this afternoon that it plans to exit the 5G smartphone modem business, leaving Qualcomm as the only supplier for Apple's iPhones.
The complicated legal battle centered around modem chips and had been raging in courts around the world since 2016. For years, Apple bought modem chips from Qualcomm, but chafed under Qualcomm's prices and requirement that any company using its chips would also pay licensing fees for its patents. New iPhone models released in 2018 used Intel modem chips, and Apple said in a previous FTC trial that Qualcomm. UPDATE: Intel announced this afternoon that it plans to exit the 5G smartphone modem business, leaving Qualcomm as the only supplier for Apple's iPhones.
What? (Score:1)
Apple said that Qualcomm... what? You can't even finish sentences now? You just left and went to lunch, is that it?
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Please insert 25 cents for another minute.
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Apple said that Qualcomm... what? You can't even finish sentences now? You just left and went to lunch, is that it?
...would you like to know more?
(said in an ominous TV announcer voice.)
Re: What? (Score:2)
You can't even finish sentences now?
Obviously it'd be even better if Msmash wouldn't even start a sentence... but I'm sure we're grateful for what we can get.
Re:Apple is not a fair company. (Score:4, Informative)
Qualcom had a crappy bussiness model (Score:4, Informative)
Actually it was a great bussiness model but not an ethical one-- possibly not even legal.
Promise FRAND licesncing in return for getting your patents made part of a standard.
Force companies to license your patents too if they want to be first in line for your chips. Add on things like a cut of the revenue of the devices the chips are used in. Definitely not FRAND. Sue them if they re-implement anything that evades the patent restrictions.
To make this stick you cut cozy deals with a few companies so that their competitors can't compete if they have to pay full price to Qualcom. Again, blowing the F in FRAND.
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You know that Apple and Intel are both US companies too, right?
You're kind of an idiot.
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Qualcomm has learned these tricks from Intel all too well. It's indeed ironic that Intel is at the receiving side right now. Bad karma is a b!tch.
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Of course it's legal to do that. BUT, the 'other product' you are repackaging into may ALSO be covered by a patent, and just buying a CPU does not give you the license to make that other product, in the US or probably anywhere else.
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...just buying a CPU does not give you the license to make that other product, in the US or probably anywhere else.
Yes it does. It's called patent exhaustion, and the Supreme Court has ruled on it before, and is likely to rule on it again. One of the Federal Circuits has been getting extremely creative about how 'sticky' patents are, and at least some of their rulings have been fairly directly contradicted by the Supreme Court already. It isn't over, but it's fairly clear that SCOTUS is determined to defend patent exhaustion, and they always win in the end.
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Your knowledge of patent exhaustion is laughable. Patent exhaustion says that the seller of a product can not control the product once it is sold. In no way does patent exhaustion allow you to infringe on OTHER patents, whether or not they use the product in question.
For instance, suppose you invented the transistor, and also a particular amplifier that used that transistor. Patent exhaustion would prevent you from saying 'this transistor may not be used in anyone else's amplifier', but it would NOT prev
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In no way does patent exhaustion allow you to infringe on OTHER patents, whether or not they use the product in question.
I misread your original post, because your original post is a total non sequitur. Qualcomm didn't take Apple to court for infringing some patent they own that wasn't embodied in the chips they were selling. They tried to claim that their battery life management patent was somehow independent of the chip they were selling which... implemented the battery life patent.
We were talking about the seller of the product. It doesn't matter how many patents are embodied in the product, from the transistor to the a
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No, but it should give you license to use the x86 instruction set to run software on the chip. And license to use technologies involved in talking to various RAM, PCI, USB, and other device interconnects.
And you know what? It does.
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Nope. You get a license for patents embodied in the hardware. You certainly do not get licenses for applications of that hardware.
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Do you think when you buy a transistor you automatically have a license to build any circuit imaginable with that transistor? A piece of hardware and an application using that hardware are two separate things.
Your example is odd. Yes, when you buy a modem you expect the modem manufacturer to have paid any required licenses. No shit. But that is not what this is about. This is you bought a modem and wish to use it in a particular way that is also patented. Buying the modem does not give you that licens
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When you take those components and put them together to make some sort of useful circuit you are creating something else. And that something else may well be covered by someone's patent, and buying those components sure as hell doesn't negate that.
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if you sell a piece of hardware the cost should include all associated licenses
They only sell the hardware if you license the patents. Qualcomm had already informed Apple the details of the deal. Apple went ahead with the deal, and then later Apple ordered Foxconn to withhold royalty payments. Apple also had internal presentations with slides about wanting to hurt Qualcomm financially.
Qualcomm might be at fault in other areas, but on this, Apple is getting a dose of their own medicine. Apple grabs 30% of sales of their App developers for running a damn FTP site and a keyword search en
Re: Double dipping (Score:1)
Apple is hardly smelling of roses from this. They stopped buying chips from Qualcomm, and also stopped paying any patent royalties at all, amounting to wilful IP theft. They attempted to renegotiate their contract with their supplier by holding a large chunk of their revenue to ransom, while also helping that supplier's competitor reach performance parity.
If Apple had picked a slightly smaller vendor, this bullying probably would have worked. Apple already have a huge profit margin, it's unlikely any signi
Royalty dispute? (Score:1)
Why? Was one of them claiming to be king or something?
Big whoop about 5G (Score:2)
It frustrates me greatly that all the various publications seem to be fighting over who can crow about 5G the loudest, yet when you look at the current pace of rollout, most of us won't see 5G for many years yet if ever.
Verizon for example is struggling to get it working well in even dense urban centres where the value is greatest, so I expect it will probably take at least a decade before suburban areas get it, and rural areas probably not at all.
And even if it does work.... yeah so what? The performance
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You will if you aren't in the United States.
The US carriers are playing their usual games of rebranding existing shitty services as "5G", or dicking around with fringe-of-the-standard garbage instead of just going and buying equipment and deploying.
Handset manufacturers are launching 5G handsets literally next month, but you won't see one on offer from US carriers, because they just aren't ready.
It's sausage in the making... (Score:1)
The old adage about sausage-making is very true when corporations put their stake in the ground and demand their terms.
To be honest, if greed were set to the side and companies would settle for a reasonable profit rather than the greatest profit they could possibly attain, then this wouldn't be an issue. But the greatest force in a capitalist economy is greed.
Qualcomm and Apple both could have come to terms on this issue years ago if only one or the other could have had sane and reasonable leadership able t
Finally (Score:2, Informative)
Natural extension of the itunes tax (Score:2)
So was Qualcomm asking for 30% of all sales made on their modems?
Qualcomm Stockholders enjoyed that news... (Score:2)
QCOM jumped $13 (23%) the moment this news broke.
Apple's dilemma (Score:2)
Had Intel not dropped the ball on 5G as was reported two weeks ago [fastcompany.com] I think Apple would have taken this the whole way. /.) as a possible chip supplier but given the US stance on Huawei 5G tech the preferred outcome had to be Intel or Qualcomm.
Huawei was mentioned (on
The really interesting detail is "The companies also have reached a six-year license agreement, effective as of April 1, 2019" because it suggests that Apple's own silicon workshop isn't anywhere near ready to deliver their own mobile radio silic
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You bring up an interesting point - if Apple now gets separate licensing terms, doesn't that violate the F/RAND licensing that every other Qualcomm customer adopted in order to use this stuff?
Apple was bitching about the 'R' in F/RAND, and basically just got Qualcomm to agree to violate the 'F' by making a special deal for Apple. Unless other companies are not having to pay a percent of device value, in which case Apple may have had a sound case.