How Qualcomm Shook Down The Cell Phone Industry For Almost 20 Years

A pretty sobering read <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/how-qualcomm-shook-down-the-cell-phone-industry-for-almost-20-years/>: Qualcomm's first weapon against competitors: patent licensing terms requiring customers to pay a royalty on every phone sold—not just phones that contained Qualcomm's wireless chips. Sound familiar? Judge Koh draws a direct parallel to licensing behavior that got Microsoft in legal trouble in the 1990s. Microsoft would offer PC makers a discount if they agreed to pay Microsoft a licensing fee for every PC sold—whether or not the PC shipped with a copy of MS-DOS. This effectively meant that a PC maker had to pay twice if it shipped a PC running a non-Microsoft operating system. There’s a lot more--the article reads like a catalogue of gangster-like tactics. All of which is perfectly all right under the US interpretation of “Free Enterprise”, of course ... Also, reading the details of how Qualcomm managed to sabotage Intel’s efforts to develop 5G chips, it seems to me that Qualcomm is directly responsible for the situation today where US companies are lagging behind Chinese ones like Huawei in 5G capability.

Back on Fri, 31 May 2019 11:15:58 +1200, I wrote:
A pretty sobering read <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/how-qualcomm-shook-down-the-cell-phone-industry-for-almost-20-years/>:
... the article reads like a catalogue of gangster-like tactics. All of which is perfectly all right under the US interpretation of “Free Enterprise”, of course ...
Judge Lucy Koh’s verdict has just been overturned by an appeals court <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/08/appeals-court-ruling-for-qualcomm-a-victory-of-theory-over-facts/>: Judge Koh thought the FTC had demonstrated predatory and exclusionary conduct. She described how Qualcomm threatened to abruptly cut off the modem chip supply of smartphone makers who challenged Qualcomm's high patent rates. She found Qualcomm structured deals with Apple, Samsung, LG, and other smartphone vendors to discourage them from doing business with other chipmakers. She cited internal documents in which Qualcomm executives acknowledged the anticompetitive impact of these policies. But three judges from the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court ignored much of this evidence and waved the rest away. So Qualcomm is now free to continue its patent (ab)uses.
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro