Qualcomm and Apple are engaged in what will likely be a long and epic legal battle. Apple disputed Qualcomm’s legal right to charge heightened royalties for use of its tech, and Qualcomm requirement that Apple pay a percentage of the iPhone’s revenue in return for the use of Qualcomm patents, and Apple has sued the company in three countries.
In the United States, Apple is suing Qualcomm for a hefty $1 billion — but it has also filed a lawsuit in China against the company for $145 million, and it has another suit pending in the United Kingdom.
But the cell phone chip maker has fought back, and now accuses the iPhone maker of stealing its modem technology and passing it on to Intel.
The confusion surfaced when the San Diego company filed a suit related to the leaking of confidential information and other trade secrets that were shared with Apple on a contractual basis and were implemented on the Intel chip.
Apple’s hardware engineers would be sharing the source code of the Qualcomm chip to improve the overall performance of Intel-produced devices, with the aim of having the same quality as previously offered, but in a product provided by another company.
In contrast, the apple company says that the charges made by Qualcomm make no sense, since there would be no need for them to carry out this type of industrial fraud. And they say the company charges too much for its chips and that was influencing the final pricing of the devices. In order to reduce these expenses and maintain quality, it was decided that joining Intel would be better because they offer more options at lower prices.
