News Judge: Qualcomm ‘Strangled Competition' With Its Patent Licensing Practices

[Lucian Armasu]

Judge Koh ruled that Qualcomm has violated antitrust law through its abusive and anti-competitive patent-licensing practices.

Judge: Qualcomm ‘Strangled Competition' With Its Patent Licensing Practices : Read more

 

[velocityg4]

It's California not Califfornia.

It sounds like a good ruling. I do wonder how many more years of appeals will occur before they are actually forced to make changes.

 

[mihen]

I doubt it would hold if they appeal. Judge is region biased. Same one who ruled on Apple vs. Samsung. If the trial is not held south of Los Angeles then Qualcomm may have to appeal again.

As a major player in the wireless headset technology, Qualcomm is well within its authority on how it deals with patents it creates. Obviously I don't think they should still have patents from more than 7 years ago, but the patents they have currently brought to the market is what makes the entire cellphone industry work. They don't need to license out their patents. They can be like Apple and say no soup for you. Instead they allow others to use their patents and create competition.

 

[thegriff]

My issue with Qualcomm would be that they charge the fee's even if they use their Modem, shouldn't all that licensed technology be part of the Modem cost? Unless there are other capabilities not in the modem that are used.

 

[AllanGH]

FRAND was the chopping block upon which both SCO and microsoft lost their heads on such issues.

It's a solid ruling. Qualcomm can appeal, but they are not likely to prevail.

 

[JamesSneed]

FRAND was the chopping block upon which both SCO and microsoft lost their heads on such issues.

It's a solid ruling. Qualcomm can appeal, but they are not likely to prevail.

Agree. Qualcomm has done great work and has some wonderful patents but that does not mean they get to violate FRAND. The FRAND requirement facilitates widespread use of the standard and ensures that each owner benefits from use of the patent without gaining an unfair bargaining advantage.

 

[AllanGH]

Patent law was crafted during a slower age, and the revisions to patent and copyright law have not taken into account the breakneck pace at which technological advances, and creative expression, now occur. The government could greatly benefit society if they prohibited the acquisition of patents by non-originators (patent trolls), eliminated software patents altogether, pulled back patent terms to 5 years, and re-jinked copyright law to benefit the individual creators, instead of favoring corporate entities.

 

[mlee 2500]

If you're going to call these fees excessive then you better have a solid grasp of the costs involved in developing these technologies (and their utility to the applications that leverage them). I have my doubts that is the case here.

 

[AllanGH]

If you're going to call these fees excessive then you better have a solid grasp of the costs involved...

LOL....the fees are excessive, at least in this case.

In other cases? That's really a case by case evaluation, and price-gouging is usually fairly obvious.

 

[King_V]

This sort of reminds me a little of something RAMBUS tried to pull - been a while, but didn't they contribute something to standards that then became part of, was it DDR, maybe - then later tried to claim royalties on it?

 

[AllanGH]

That does sound familiar. I need to look that up, because I'm curious as to whether I'm remembering it properly.

And there have been a few notable cases where code was contributed to OSS projects, and the contributing organization tried to come back and charge licensing fees for the Open-Sourced code. (SCO was a prominent player in that game, way-back when.)

 

[King_V]

It was really bugging the crap out of me that I couldn't remember, so I did some digging. Found it:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2002/06/ftc-issues-complaint-against-rambus-inc

 

[AllanGH]

Thanks....I just got home from picking-up the wife from work, and was going to dig into that.