Once again both Broadcom and Qualcomm are claiming court victories after the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit decided that two of Broadcom’s anti-trust claims against Qualcomm may go ahead and go to trial.
A previous decision rejected all of the anti-trust claims and the appeal has concurred on four counts but sent two counts back to the lower court for trial. Qualcomm was quick to put a victory spin on the decision saying that the US Court of Appeals has agreed that all but two of Broadcom’s federal claims in Broadcom’s antitrust complaint against Qualcomm should be dismissed.
But that still leaves virtually every complaint that Broadcom has had against Qualcomm continuing still today. It has won two intellectual property suits, one where Qualcomm was suing Broadcom over compression patents and another where Broadcom was suing Qualcomm over power saving patents. It has also won an ITC case to stop infringing chips from being imported into the US, and that has been upheld on appeal.
Back in March Qualcomm and Broadcom agreed to dismiss all their patent and trades secrets lawsuits, supposedly averting five jury trials but the agreement did not take in any that were already in the courtroom or the International Trade Commission judgment, nor the US and European antitrust complaints.
US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said that the case presents “important questions regarding whether a patent holder’s deceptive conduct before a private standards determining organization may be condemned under the antitrust laws,” and the three judges attending unanimously said that Broadcom has made a case that “Qualcomm possessed monopoly power’ and that ‘Qualcomm obtained and maintained its market power willfully, and not as a consequence of a superior product, business acumen, or historic accident.’
Broadcom filed the antitrust case in July 2005, alleging that Qualcomm abused the wireless technology standards setting process and has failed to meet its commitments to license technology for cellular wireless standards on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.
The District Court had granted Qualcomm’s motion to dismiss the case in August 2006, but now Broadcom will have its day in court and so far that has always meant bad news for Qualcomm.