Apple Infringed Three Qualcomm Patents, Jury Finds

Mobile phone chip supplier Qualcomm Inc on Friday won a legal victory against iPhone maker Apple Inc, with a jury in federal court in San Diego finding that Apple owes Qualcomm about US$31 million for infringing three of its patents.

Qualcomm last year sued Apple alleging it had violated patents related to helping mobile phones get better battery life. During an eight-day trial, Qualcomm asked the jury to award it unpaid patent royalties of up to US$1.41 per iPhone that violated the patents.

The US$31 million penalty is small change for Apple, the second most valuable US company after Microsoft Corp, with a market value of US$866 billion and annual revenue totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. But the setting of a per-phone royalty rate for Qualcomm’s technology gives the chip supplier a fresh line of attack in its two-year-old legal battle with Apple.

The biggest case, filed by Apple in early 2017, begins in April. Apple has sought to dismantle what it calls Qualcomm’s illegal business model of both licensing patents and selling chips to phone makers. Qualcomm has accused Apple of using its technology without paying.—Market Watch