Federal judge orders stop to Qualcomm chip sales
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A U.S. federal judge has clamped further restrictions on Qualcomm&#39;s ability to sell and support certain wireless chip sets, saying that they infringe on three patents held by rival Broadcom.The injunction, issued Monday by U.S. District Court Judge James Selna, prohibits Qualcomm from making and selling certain third generation (3G) chip sets, used to provide Internet access to mobile phones. Qualcomm is also barred from engaging in a range of marketing and customer support activities related to its WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) and EV-DO (EVolution-Data Only) chips, which are used to process data on high-speed wireless networks.The ruling is the latest in a series of actions in the long-running dispute between the two chip vendors. In July, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC)&#160;ruled that Qualcomm infringed Broadcom patents&#160;and barred Qualcomm from importing chips to the U.S., but the Commission allowed mobile phone vendors to ship the chips in their products.&quot;The ITC order did not go nearly as far in prohibiting other activities from Qualcomm,&quot; said David Rosmann, vice president of intellectual property litigation with Broadcom. &quot;The U.S. District Court order has in some respects much broader remedies. So the activities that are going to be barred by this injunction go a long way to&#160;stopping Qualcomm&#39;s continued operations&#160;in support of these infringing chips.&quot;Broadcom sued Qualcomm in May 2005, claiming that Qualcomm&#39;s chips violated three of the company&#39;s patents. In May of this year, a&#160;jury found in Broadcom&#39;s favor&#160;and awarded the company $19.6 million in damages. Monday&#39;s injunction stems from that decision.Broadcom is also suing Qualcomm on other patent infringement and antitrust claims, Rosmann said. The antitrust case is expected to go to trial in 2009.Qualcomm executives could not be reached immediately for comment.
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A federal judge in California ruled  on Monday that wireless chip maker Qualcomm Inc  can  keep selling some chips whose designs infringe patents held by  rival Broadcom Corp  through January 2009.
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(InfoWorld) - AÂ federal judge in Delaware has dismissed portions of a class-action suit that accused Intel Corp. of violating antitrust laws. U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Farnan, in a ruling issued Wednesday, said that a U.S. court has no jurisdiction over the foreign conduct claims in a lawsuit that seeks monetary damages for U.S. consumers and businesses who purchased PCs with Intel chips. Those consumers say they were forced to pay too much because Intel used its near-monopoly position to bar computer makers from using Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) chips, thus eliminating competition and keeping prices artificially high. The case has no direct relation to the antitrust suit leveled against Intel in 2005 by AMD, but mirrors the same charges, said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. Farnan is hearing both cases, and in September made the same decision about the AMD version. The ruling means that even if the court found Intel guilty of forcing up prices, the plaintiffs could not calculate the damages they won by including PC sales by foreign vendors like Acer Inc., Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp., Mulloy said. They would have to base their claim solely on sales by U.S. vendors like Dell Inc., Gateway Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. Still, both AMD and the foreign consumers will continue pressing their cases because Farnan also ruled they could use foreign evidence to build a domestic case against Intel. "AMD and the class [action suit] would need to sue Intel in foreign jurisdictions to recover monetary damages that were incurred outside the U.S.," said AMD spokesman Michael Silverman. "From our perspective -- and I suspect the class would say the same -- the critical piece was to gain access to that foreign discovery. In both cases, the judge has allowed that access." In addition, the class-action suit concerns only the harm caused to domestic customers, said Daniel A. Small, a lawyer for the firm Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld and Toll, of Washington, D.C. who argued the plaintiffs' case. "We're pursuing very actively document discovery, both from Intel and from third parties," Small said. However, that effort hit a large hurdle on Monday, whenÂ Intel admitted it had lost many internal e-mail recordsÂ related to the AMD case, making it impossible to collect them as evidence. On Wednesday, the court gave Intel a deadline of April 10 to turn over an explanation of its e-mail preservation plan, a list of correspondence between the people responsible for following it and its plan to restore the lost data. Another challenge for the class-action suit is Intel's motion to dismiss the entire case because it says customers were never harmed by increased prices. Instead, Intel says it used its dominant market position to compete with AMD by decreasing prices, Small said. Farnan said Wednesday he would rule on that motion by the end of March. Â
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Qualcomm received some good news on the legal front Friday, with an antitrust suit against it dismissed, and Broadcom agreeing to drop patent infringement suits over Bluetooth technology.
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While upholding a ban on importing Qualcomm chips themselves into the US, an appeals court judge stayed the ban for individual phone manufacturers to continue shipping their phones here.
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On Thursday, the International Trade Commission (ITC) announced that Qualcomm is barred from importing certain high-end chips and chipsets designed for use in 3G cell phones and other mobile devices.
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The hit on Qualcomm from a patent suit it lost to rival Broadcom may be slashed because of an unrelated ruling that came down in August.In May, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California found that&#160;Qualcomm infringed three Broadcom patents&#160;and awarded Broadcom $19.6 million. The judge in that case, James Selna, said he would double the damages to more than $39 million because the jury found the infringement was wilful. The damage award isn&#39;t final because other issues in the case are still pending.On Monday, Selna tentatively overturned the double award because of a new standard for proving wilful infringement, said Broadcom attorney David Rosmann. Broadcom can either accept the $19.6 million in direct damages or pursue a new trial in which it would try to prove Qualcomm acted deliberately, he said. Judge Selna ruled any new trial would look at the whole case over again, he said.Broadcom hasn&#39;t decided which path to take, but its priority in the case is getting an injunction to stop Qualcomm from making, using or selling the chips, Rosmann said.&quot;The issue of the injunction is far more important to Broadcom than the damages,&quot; Rosmann said. &quot;We&#39;re hoping to move forward on the injunction as quickly as possible.&quot;In August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upped the ante for patent owners that want to earn higher damages -- they can be as much as tripled -- by proving someone knew they were infringing a patent and did so anyway, according to patent attorney Smith Brittingham of Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett &amp; Dunner.&quot;You have to show more comprehension of the situation than you would have had to in the past,&quot; Brittingham said. The Federal Circuit ruling, on a suit against hard-drive vendor Seagate Technology, automatically changed the standard in all federal courts, he said. The ruling could change other pending cases, he said.The new standard probably won&#39;t discourage patent suits among competitors like the Broadcom-Qualcomm dispute, but it may make litigation less attractive for patent-holding companies in the business of suing, Brittingham said.&quot;It&#39;s consistent with the view that ... maybe patent infringement cases have gotten too easy to win and have created an unnecessary drag on business,&quot; he said.Judge Selna asked Broadcom for a decision by the end of this week, Rosmann said. Qualcomm declined to comment on the substance of the case.The suit is one of several between Qualcomm and Broadcom, who are battling over the market for mobile-phone chips.
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Blockage remains blocked The US International Trade Commission has denied Qualcomm's appeal against a ban that could stop millions of the company's phones from entering the US market.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. International Trade Commission said that QualcommÂ is infringing on one of Broadcom's patents, dealing a blow to Qualcomm in anÂ ongoing patent battleÂ between the companies. The Commission hasn't yet issued a penalty for the infringement and Qualcomm pledged to appeal the decision. The companies are in the midst of many other lawsuits with each other regarding cell phone patents. Broadcom said the Commission could bar Qualcomm from importing its chips to the U.S., forbid Qualcomm from selling the infringing products in the U.S., and even ban the import of phones containing the chips. But Qualcomm says that the Administrative Law Judge, who made the initial ruling that was upheld by the Commission, has recommended against barring the import of phones that use the chips. The Commission made its ruling on Friday and both Qualcomm and Broadcom released statements on Monday. The Commission will issue its remedy decision by Feb. 9. Qualcomm has downplayed the importance of the technology in question, saying it is based on software and not fundamental to CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), the mobile technology that Qualcomm created and is best known for. Qualcomm has said previously that it is exploring ways to work around the technology. The two companies have several other outstanding cases against each other. One is set to be tried in March, another in May, and a third doesn't yet have a trial date set. Broadcom is also appealing an antitrust suit that it filed against Qualcomm which has been dismissed. Broadcom is also one of five technology companies that filedÂ anticompetitive complaints against QualcommÂ with the European Commission. Â
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U.S. mobile users waiting for the next crop of phones could breathe a sigh of relief Wednesday when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted a stay on an import ban against handsets that use some Qualcomm chips.
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WASHINGTON/NEW YORK  - A U.S. trade agency on Thursday banned imports of future advanced cell phone models using Qualcomm Inc.  chips, potentially hurting the country's biggest wireless services.
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Nokia  said on Tuesday the  United States International Trade Commission has ordered a stay  of Qualcomm's  suit against Nokia.
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The U.S. International Trade Commission has denied Qualcomm Inc.'s  request to stay an order banning imports of new phone models with Qualcomm chips the trade agency said infringe a Broadcom Corp.  patent, Broadcom said on Friday.
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(InfoWorld) - A district court judge in the U.S. state of Delaware has dismissed part of Advanced Micro Devices' lawsuit against Intel. The dismissed claims relate to alleged business practices of Intel that AMD claimsÂ affected sales of its own microprocessors. Intel petitioned the court toÂ have the claims dismissedÂ because it said that while AMD is headquartered in the U.S. it manufactures its processors in Germany and assembles them in Malaysia, Singapore and China. AMD is already seeking damages through the Japanese courts, European Commission and Korea Fair Trade Commission for the same business practices that are alleged in the U.S. lawsuit. Because the alleged harm was suffered outside the U.S. and because AMD is seeking redress overseas, Intel argued that the allegations fall outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts, according to a memorandum opinion from the court. AMD contended that it is not seeking such "foreign commerce claims" and that the x86 microprocessor market is a global market and that Intel's conduct in overseas markets had an effect on its business in the U.S. "AMD has not demonstrated that the alleged foreign conduct of Intel has direct, substantial and foreseeable effects in the U.S. which gives rise to its claim. AMD's allegations, taken in the light of the most favorable to AMD, describe a foreign effect and a foreign harm that have had ripple effects for the domestic market, but have not had any direct, substantial or reasonable effect which would give rise to an antitrust claim within the jurisdictional reach of the Sherman Act. Accordingly, the court will dismiss AMD's claims based on alleged lost sales of AMD's microprocessors to foreign customers," U.S. District Judge Joseph Farnan wrote in his conclusion. Chuck Mulloy, an Intel spokesman, said, "We are pleased that the judge appears to have agreed with out legal argument to remove those aspects of the case outside U.S. jurisdiction." He declined further comment until a conference with the judge takes place on Wednesday. AMD could not immediately be reached for comment. AMD, the long-time No. 2 player in the microprocessor market, jolted the IT industry in June last year when it filed its broad lawsuit against rival Intel. The suit alleged Intel had managed to maintain a monopoly in the PC processor market by illegally coercing customers around the world into using its products. The 48-page court filing identified 38 companies that, AMD alleged, had been coerced into using Intel processors at the expense of competing chips from AMD. Included are almost all of the large companies in the PC and server market, such as Dell, Sony, Gateway, and IBM. Among the allegation, AMD said Fujitsu Siemens Computers was offered a "special discount" on Celeron processors in return for hiding AMD-based computers on its Web site and removing references from its retail catalog. Also, at the 2004 Super Computing Show, an annual conference devoted to high performance computing, Intel offered computer makers money to remove AMD systems from their booths.
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Qualcomm Inc.&#39;s  chief  executive said on Thursday that the company would ask the Bush  administration to overturn an order by the U.S. International  Trade Commission banning some imported cell phone models  containing Qualcomm chips and would also seek an emergency stay  from a federal appeals court.
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Broadcom goes straight to Qualcomm's customer to cut a licensing deal for its patents, which Qualcomm has been found to infringe.
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A Delaware judge has thrown out the last claim against Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) filed by Qualcomm Inc. in a licensing dispute between the two companies, ending the current round of litigation, TI said in a release Wednesday.