Qualcomm Forced To Refund BlackBerry $815M In Royalty Payments

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yamahahornist

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Qualcomm shouldn't of had to pay back Blackberry for "unsold" devices.. What the heck is that crap! When a 7-11 buys donuts and they don't sell they throw them away and move on; they don't get a refund for what they didn't sell.
 
^^I know, but the arbitration challenge was binding between the two. Everyone has a right to request an arbitration hearing (people, companies) in a legal challenge or contract dispute.

I think both companies are losers here. Blackberry for being a big fat fail and not seeing where the future of the smart phone was going (clue: nobody cared about small nearly unusable pullout or integrated keyboards after 2010). Qualcomm for being pompous arrogant jerks. I interviewed with them once many years ago and didn't like the attitude of the management. Their noses were high in the air.
 
.... I wonder if this is why the US Markets pretty much only seen QualComm CPUs in Samsung Phones... could they have been locked by QualComm?

Did the arbitrator null and void the contract between Blackberry and Qualcomm, or did they decide to piece-meal what they may have personally liked or disliked about the contract?
 

TJ Hooker

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This doesn't sound like Qualcomm is being forced to buy back unused chips. It says they're being forced to pay back royalties, which makes it sound like Blackberry paid Qualcomm an up front amount of money to use their tech, based on how many phones they expected to sell based on said tech. Then they ended up selling much less, and they're getting back the money that they paid as royalties for phones they never ended up selling.
 

toadhammer

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I forget the specifics, but I believe Qualcomm owns the patent on CDMA. The ability for users to share bandwidth on the same frequencies. That means you cannot do CDMA, GSM, or LTE unless you are using their chips. Basic monopoly in the modern world. Not a question of whether you use their chips or not. If you're screwed into using their modems, not much worse to commit to their CPUs as well.
 

bit_user

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I'm pretty sure @jama was referring to the way Intel has long abused its market position. I'm not aware of AMD ever engaging in the same sorts of anti-competitive tactics, but perhaps that's only because they never had a market position quite strong enough.
 
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