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 $31 million for infringing three of its patents.
Qualcomm had 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 $1.41 per iPhone that violated the patents.
The $31-million penalty is a small change for Apple, the second most valuable US company after Microsoft Corp, with a market value of $866 billion and an 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.
“The technologies invented by Qualcomm and others are what made it possible for Apple to enter the market and become so successful so quickly,” Don Rosenberg, Qualcomm’s general counsel, said in a statement.
