Last week, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a lobbying group representing Google, eBay, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, Intel, Samsung, and other tech companies, asked the United States International Trade Commission to reject Qualcomm's request for an import ban on some of Apple's iPhone and iPad models that use Intel chips.
The group said that banning Apple products that use Intel chips would enable Qualcomm's anti-competitive behavior and cause supply issues, resulting in harm to consumers.
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Qualcomm today responded to the CCIA in a court filing, accusing the group of launching a "coordinated effort aimed at misdirecting" the ITC, reports Reuters. Qualcomm also said that the import ban it requested is not focused on Intel's chips, but the patented technology used in iPhones with Intel chips.
In its filing on Monday, Qualcomm argued that its import ban is not actually about Intel's chips, but instead concerns the patented technology that surrounds the Intel chips in current versions of the iPhone. Thus a ban on importing the phones would not hurt competition in the long term, Qualcomm argued. "Apple can purchase and utilize any LTE modem it chooses so long as it does not infringe Qualcomm's asserted patents," the company wrote.
Apple and Qualcomm have been embroiled in an ongoing legal battle following Apple's decision to sue Qualcomm in January for charging unfair royalties and refusing to pay quarterly rebates.
The fight between the two companies has escalated since then, most recently leading Qualcomm to file a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple and request an import ban for some iPhone models.
In a statement to Reuters on Qualcomm's filing this afternoon, Apple once again complained that Qualcomm makes a single chip in the iPhone but "for years [has] been demanding a percentage of the total cost of [Apple] products - effectively taxing Apple's innovation."
Top Rated Comments
Considering what people get for that 30% it's a pretty good deal. Compare that to publishers in other industries, music, books etc and it's damn good.
They read like some Appleinsider articles: they start with a bogus conclusion and work backwards, using the conclusion as "evidence".
E.g. the rate is too high for us, we're only making hundreds of billions in profit, woe is us. We need even more profit margin next year or Wall Street will diss Tim Cook. Can't have that. We only want to pay what we want to. Therefore we don't think the asking rate is fair. Therefore it must not be FRAND. Therefore wanting us to pay the same rate everyone else has paid for decades, is Apple extortion.
As if Apple would lower their prices to buyers and pass on the savings. Sure :rolleyes:. Now, a lot of people here constantly claim that making high profits is a good thing. If so, then that applies to all companies, not just Apple.
A savvy user might prefer that any extra money went towards Qualcomm's 5/6G future R&D, which will benefit all of us the same as it did with 3/4G, rather than just get stashed away into Apple's offshore shell companies' bank accounts, never to be seen again. :eek:
Everyone in that organization is thinking forward to the next time that someone goes to the ITC about banning THEM. So they want to discourage import bans in general.
Likewise, this exact same group lobbied the Supreme Court to rule for Samsung and against Apple in that recent design patent reward appeal. (Which SCOTUS did.). That was because they all saw themselves as possibly being in the same infringement situation one day.
Companies looking out for their own future interests.