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Qualcomm CEO Says Out of Court Settlement With Apple Could Happen

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Apple and Qualcomm have been embroiled in a bitter legal battle since the beginning of the year, and though the fight has escalated in recent weeks, Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf today told Fortune that an out of court settlement is not out of the question.
"There's not really anything new going on," Mollenkopf said speaking at the Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen. About the Apple dispute, he explained "those things tend to get to resolved out of court and there's no reason why I wouldn't expect that to be the case here."
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Mollenkopf went on to say that he has no specific news of a settlement and that nothing new has happened in the case. "I don't have an announcement or anything so please don't ask, he told Fortune. Mollenkopf made a similar statement back in February, but that was before the legal battle between the two companies intensified. At that time, he also said he didn't expect a public fight, something Apple and Qualcomm have not been able to avoid.

qualcomm-iphone-7-800x374.jpg

Today's interview suggests Qualcomm is still open to settlement talks, but whether that will happen remains to be seen. If Apple and Qualcomm do not settle, we can expect a legal battle that will continue on for several years.

The fight between Apple and Qualcomm started in January, after the FTC complained that Qualcomm had engaged in anticompetitive patent licensing practices. Apple sued Qualcomm for $1 billion just days later, accusing the company of charging unfair royalties for "technologies they have nothing to do with" and refusing to pay quarterly rebates.

According to Apple, Qualcomm has overcharged it by billions of dollars by "double-dipping" with unfair patent licensing agreements, while Qualcomm claims its innovations are "at the heart of every iPhone" and that the royalties are fair.

Qualcomm went on to countersue Apple in April, accusing the company of breaching licensing agreements, making false statements, and encouraging regulatory attacks against Qualcomm, which prompted Apple to stop making royalty payments to Qualcomm entirely until a court can determine the proper amount due.

Apple in late June expanded its lawsuit against Qualcomm, and at the beginning of July, Qualcomm filed a separate patent lawsuit against Apple and asked the International Trade Commission to block imports of select iPhone and iPad models.

Article Link: Qualcomm CEO Says Out of Court Settlement With Apple Could Happen
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/07/17/apple-qualcomm-out-of-court-settlement/
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With lawyers involved, everything takes about 10x longer then it should.

So an update from February is really like an update from 2 weeks ago in the real world. If pressed by either side, the lawyers would say they are still gathering evidence into record or doing some photocopying to have things properly transcribed.

They know tha upper management internally only have so much time in a week or month to deal with these legal matters, nevermind each case, so the law department pretends to be busy after the monthly meeting and waits until the next meeting in 6 weeks to appear busy on the case again. And that's just dealing internally, never mind actually attempting to make progress with the other side.

Crooks.
 
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4jasontv said:
Please don't settle. Take them to court. Try and get every penny out of them... and fail. Fail so that the little guys who can't sue Qualcomm can get a reasonable price when trying to develop something beyond a pad of glass.
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Yes, that feels like justice.
Reality however would be years, perhaps several or more, of suit and counter suit, appeals etc etc.
Just look at the court case of Apple-v-Samsung and the iOS UI patent infringement of Android.
It's still ongoing. It may never end.

Qualcomm got away with it for too long, Apple gained enough financial and technology strength to mount a war and win so Qualcomm needs to make peace, say sorry and get something of a deal which sees the lawyers getting as little of what's left of their profits as possible.
 
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Nonetheless, Qualcomm had a nice and rather convincing full-page advertisement in today's national New York Times, justifying their existence.
I haven't seen Apple do a similar ad since, oh, when the 1984 Macintosh was introduced and they were running full-spread ads in typesetting trade magazines (as well as the Wall Street Journal) convincing type houses to change over to Macintosh with its state-of-the-art bitmapped fonts (while failing to mention that every trade ad Apple ran had been typeset by a professional type house on proprietary typesetting machines, i.e., not the Macintosh). After all, Bitstream Garamond (i.e., Apple Garamond) was still proprietary, available on only a few typesetting machines.
 
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FYI to all, and you heard it here first ... I'm gonna try to get an audience with Mollenkopf Tues or Wed, regarding a market opportunity that I'm sure is Off Qualcomm's radar, as well as one that offers "potential Leverage" in their endeavor ! ... I'm sure it helps that I've spent a year consulting at Qualcomm on their SnapDragon ASIC family, but it's what I've done since then that's gonna knock their socks off ! ... this is gonna steal some 8 and 7s Thunder ! ... at a MIN, consider this One Across the Bow !
 
Qualcomm: [Charges Apple X% of MSRP, after charging Foxconn by some other scheme.]
FTC: [To Qualcomm] Ahem.
Apple: [To Qualcomm] We want our assembler, Foxconn, to pay you $X flat licensing per part once. We won't pay again for the assembled product.
Qualcomm: No. We'll sue.
Apple: Good luck with that.
Qualcomm: Our intellectual property is fundamental to everything about a modern smartphone.
Apple: In that case, FRAND.
Qualcomm: No. We'll sue.
Apple: [Uses Intel parts.]
 
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isomorphic said:
Qualcomm: [Charges Apple X% of MSRP, after charging Foxconn by some other scheme.]
FTC: [To Qualcomm] Ahem.
Apple: [To Qualcomm] We want our assembler, Foxconn, to pay you $X flat licensing per part once. We won't pay again for the assembled product.
Qualcomm: No. We'll sue.
Apple: Good luck with that.
Qualcomm: Our intellectual property is fundamental to everything about a modern smartphone.
Apple: In that case, FRAND.
Qualcomm: No. We'll sue.
Apple: [Uses Intel parts.]
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I get the point you're trying to make... and the joke. It would help if everything in your quote wasn't wrong. Maybe going back to look at the competing lawsuits would help.
 
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These guys are so salty that they exist only to sell commodity parts. "The iPhone wouldn't exist without us" or something along those lines was their only argument. Not to discount the brilliant engineers working for them (I know a few), just their management.
 
JPSaltzman said:
Nonetheless, Qualcomm had a nice and rather convincing full-page advertisement in today's national New York Times, justifying their existence.
I haven't seen Apple do a similar ad since, oh, when the 1984 Macintosh was introduced and they were running full-spread ads in typesetting trade magazines (as well as the Wall Street Journal) convincing type houses to change over to Macintosh with its state-of-the-art bitmapped QuickTime fonts (while failing to mention that every trade ad Apple ran had been typeset by a professional type house on proprietary typesetting machines, i.e., not the Macintosh). After all, Bitstream Garamond (i.e., Apple Garamond) was still proprietary, available on only a few typesetting machines.
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Right around that time, in my early teens, I was working after school in my Grandfather's small print shop. So, I was around for some of the transition involving Computer to Film (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_to_film). They got a Mac pretty early on. Fun times.

But why do you feel Apple should have required a printing house to have already started using its new system, in order to ask them to produce the ad encouraging houses to run the new system?

I do get that the ads in question wouldn't have showcased the Mac's capabilities fully or done it justice (like the projection screens at WWDC this year didn't do the new 120MHz refresh feature justice).

But, that's like saying Universities shouldn't promote their courses and degrees unless all their professors got their degrees from the University they now work for!
 
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Not really surprised.... this is the modern way to do business now, Apple has certainly don't this many many many times now and settled out of court. Just like it has done here.
Just seems to be a waste of time to me.

Just like the Ericsson case where Apple had to settle out of court before Ericsson ripped them to shreds in court. With that case Apple was all counter sue blah blah you charge to much blah blah... sounds familiar..
 
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I really hope Apple sorts out this issue with Qualcomm and is able to have their LTE modems in the iPhone... Because here in Australia, we have Gigabit LTE (1000Mbps) and Samsung is marketing the S8 soo much that its sooo fast over 4G etc because of their Gigabit LTE compatibility here in Australia...
 
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Sunny1990 said:
It will be Good if Apple Stay on it's stand. Qualcomm should pay back that overcharged money.
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Apple uses the exact same pricing scheme, but I guess Apple can do no wrong right?
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hotgril said:
These guys are so salty that they exist only to sell commodity parts. "The iPhone wouldn't exist without us" or something along those lines was their only argument. Not to discount the brilliant engineers working for them (I know a few), just their management.
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What is it you people usually say, "Don't like it, don't buy it". Shouldn't be hard if "The iPhone wouldn't exist without us" is wrong.
 
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