Bonum Certa Men Certa

The World is Burning for Qualcomm, Whose Dependence on Software Patent Bullying is Being Tackled in Several Continents

A company stuck in the past with nothing but a pile of patents (like Nokia)

Qualcomm phone



Summary: The days of Qualcomm's cash cow (a bunch of standard essential patents) may be numbered, as US, EU and Korean authorities belatedly look at the company's practices and Qualcomm already caves

Qualcomm's de facto monopoly (in the patents sense), as we've covered here before [1, 2], means that people pay Qualcomm a lot of money even when they buy nothing from Qualcomm. In some sense, Qualcomm does in chipsets what Microsoft does in software. It demands 'protection' money from just about everyone and it also has patent trolls to help punish for 'noncompliance' with unreasonable demands.



Qualcomm Lies



"It demands 'protection' money from just about everyone and it also has patent trolls to help punish for 'noncompliance' with unreasonable demands."Not too long ago Qualcomm came under fire from Apple, even though it had abused many other companies. Florian Müller had a peek at the latest documents and found Qualcomm claiming "credit for enabling Pokémon GO," which is of course nonsense. To quote Müller:

As the number of pages (the original complaint was approx. 100 pages, now the answer and the counterclaims fill 140 pages) shows, this is a huge commercial litigation and threatens to turn into a battle of materiel. Both parties have enlisted multiple major law firms. The first surprise here is that Quinn Emanuel is among the three firms representing Qualcomm, given that Qualcomm's filing (in paragraph 192 of the counterclaims part) accuses Samsung--another company QE is defending against Apple--of sharing (with Apple) "a common interest in diminishing Qualcomm's ability to obtain fair value for its innovations" and trying "to avoid paying fair value for Qualcomm's intellectual property and to impede Qualcomm's licensing program." I wonder how Samsung feels about its own lawyers not distancing themselves from such allegations...


Is Qualcomm trying to suck up to the Japanese and Korean regulators with this "Pokémon GO" fairy tale? As one Android-centric site put it, Qualcomm has "Big Trouble in Little Korea" and an Apple-centric site said that "[i]n a 134-page filing with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, Qualcomm provides a point-by-point rundown of Apple's January lawsuit, denying a total of 389 allegations."

"Is Qualcomm trying to suck up to the Japanese and Korean regulators with this "Pokémon GO" fairy tale?"What we have here are two patent bullies fighting one another and it's clear that only law firms are guaranteed to win, as usual (parasites can't lose).

Qualcomm to Pay BlackBerry



Meanwhile, as emerged in the news last night [1, 2, 3], Qualcomm will need to shell out a lot of money. BlackBerry, which has itself become akin to a patent troll (both directly and indirectly), expects to receive nearly a billion dollars from Qualcomm. "BlackBerry awarded $815 million in arbitration case against Qualcomm," says a headline one reader sent to us about it. Might Qualcomm need to refund even greater amounts of money to other firms?

Qualcomm's Abuses



Florian Müller published another article earlier today, having watched this case rather closely. "Qualcomm does not want European and Korean antitrust proceedings to impact its FTC litigation," says the headline. Like Intel and Microsoft, Qualcomm has come under incredible scrutiny in several continents and the effect can be devastating to a company that depends so much on patents rather than actual products. To quote Müller:

Qualcomm, which would have us believe we couldn't even play Pokémon GO if not for its wireless technologies, is fighting a global, multi-front war against regulators, industry players and consumers (who are piggybacking on the FTC case in Northern California).

On one of those fronts, BlackBerry just won an arbitration award over $815 million. Unfortunately, arbitration is opaque, so the legal basis for this is unclear, other than BlackBerry having claimed to have paid too much in license fees during an unspecified past period. The kind of wrongdoing here is totally unclear, and we also don't know what an appeals court would have decided. Still, the $815 million award, which is final and binding, has made BlackBerry's share price soar by 12%. For the Canadian company, it's a huge amount of money. For Qualcomm, it's also a very significant amount, but the bigger problem is that every independent finding of Qualcomm having overcharged someone makes it harder for Qualcomm to convince the courts of law and the court of public opinion that it's just being bullied by the likes of Apple and Samsung and that all those antitrust enforcers have all just been misled by sore losers in the marketplace and by evil companies denying Qualcomm a fair compensation for its innovations.

This concern is real. A joint case management statement filed yesterday by the FTC and Qualcomm--"joint" in terms of being a single document despite virtually zero convergence on substantive questions--in the Northern District of California shows that Qualcomm is indeed concerned about how the various parallel proceedings could influence each other.


The above already mentions the news about BlackBerry, which is important. Is Qualcomm on the run from regulators?

Unfair and Unreasonable



"Apple's challenge to Qualcomm is already having a positive impact, which is why we said we would support Apple right from the start (in this case alone)."So-called standard essential patents (SEPs) or RAND or FRAND are a subject we've covered here many times before. Last night IP Kat said that "It ha[d] been a busy couple of weeks for standard essential patents (SEPs)... and now we have the European Commission's roadmap on SEPs."

"FRAND is already in DSM," Benjamin Henrion explained, "don€´t know what is the status of this directive..."

Well, if SEPs like Qualcomm's lose their legitimacy, the effects would be enormous and also impact software companies. In China, based on what IAM said earlier today, the subject of SEPs and patent trolls that wield them (like Ericsson in Europe) is being brought up and scrutinised. To quote:

We’ve seen a major patent pool introduce a new royalty rate structure aimed at enticing more developing-market implementers to get involved, the first foreign NPE officially enter China through a joint venture agreement, and Apple directly challenging the licensing terms Qualcomm agreed on with Chinese regulators. And, of course, the Beijing IP Court issued the country’s first SEP-based injunction against Sony.


Apple's challenge to Qualcomm is already having a positive impact, which is why we said we would support Apple right from the start (in this case alone). Companies like Qualcomm offer far too little to society but more importantly, they set a dangerous precedent to be exploited by all sorts of other companies and harm productive companies.

Recent Techrights' Posts

New XBox Leaks Probably Serve to Confirm XBox's Collapse (Many More Layoffs)
It's very much consistent with what many other sites have reported lately
 
Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers, Google News Gifting Slopfarms, and Fake News/Plagiarism About "Linux"
Google itself is a slop pusher these days
Qualcomm, the New Owner of Arduino, Blasted for Its Software Patents Tax on 'Smartphones'
A lot of Qualcomm's patents are on software. We wrote about this in prior years.
XBox Layoffs Rumours, Downtime, and Criticism From XBox Co-Founder
"everyone is ditching the xbox."
Links 10/10/2025: Honoring The Legacy Of Robert Murray-Smith, Many Articles on the Hey Hi (AI) Bubble
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: October Gothic and Reading Middle Earth Role Playing; C and Ada
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 09, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 09, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Farewell to Jane Goodall, California Bans Algorithmic Price-Fixing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Lost Wages and a Saga Of Continuing To Use Palm PDAs
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's Talk in Helsinki is Done. Tomorrow Göteborg.
There are scarce details in Finnish about Dr. Stallman's talk
The Slop Song
The train wreck marches on
LLM Slop/Advanced Plagiarism Flooding the Zone With Capital That Does Not Exist
Many publishers out there still participate in this bubble instead of calling it what it is
Links 09/10/2025: Sacked Microsoft Workers Make "Sackbird", IBM Taps CockroachDB for PostgreSQL
Links for the day
"Happy Hacking Day" Richard Stallman Talk This Afternoon (From 14:00 to 16:00) at Haaga-Helia University in Pasila
Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Finland
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 08, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 08, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Impact of Microsoft Layoffs, More Data Breaches
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Autumn Blues and C IRC Bot
Links for the day
Slopwatch Appreciated by Real Authors of GNU/Linux Articles
We do try to keep on top of those things
Upgraded R.R.R.R.R.R. Today
The Web of 2025 is full of garbage, not limited to slopfarms
Freedom From Proprietary Prisons
Forking always an option
IBM's Watson Died in 1956, Now Watson Dies Again
IBM is becoming just a reseller of GAFAM and other stuff
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, and Google News
We've also just noticed more slop from UbuntuPIT
Microsoft Says That Constant Mass Layoffs Are Success, the Media Isn't Buying This Microsoft Narrative Anymore
If people in the media feel an obligation to repeat whatever lies Microsoft tells, what point will there be to the media?
Links 08/10/2025: "Mali Puts Free Speech on Trial" And Apple Enforces Dictatorship
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: ‘Death to Spotify’ and Law to Ban Loud Commercials on Streaming (Dis)Services
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Real Innovation and Nina.chat is Dead
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Y2K38 Bug is a Vulnerability, Chat Control in Europe a Threat
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows is No Longer an Operating System, It's Surveillance Project
Why is this even legal to preload on PCs outside the US?
How and Why Once-Legitimate Sites Turn Into Slopfarms
Many sites will go offline and many social control networks will shut down once they realise or even openly admit they spend money and time gardening a bunch of bots and slop
UbuntuPIT Became a Slopfarm and Gnoppix Tarnishes Its Own Brand With Slop
It fits all the characteristics of mildly-edited (if at all) slop
Slopwatch: Linux Journal and Other Slopfarms
GAFAM needs to go the way of the dodo
Gemini Links 08/10/2025: "Seek Seek Revolution" and Gradient Backgrounds
Links for the day
Qualcomm Arduino Takes Aim at Raspberry Pi
Qualcomm is a Microsoft partner
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 07, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 07, 2025
Stagnation of the Economy and What Free Software Can (or Could) Do For It
If your economic model is based on a pyramid of lies, it won't last very long
Social Control Media is Sinking
it would rightly seem like the era of centralised "social" sites (they're not social, they're about controlling the users) is ending, not overnight but gradually