Ding, ding, and yes they’re on their feet for yet another round in the Broadcom Qualcomm legal battle, this time with Qualcomm crowing that the court threw our the ‘willful’ side of the conviction, halving the damages, but with Broadcom pointing out that the verdict stands, and it says it will now seek a permanent injunction against the infringing chips ‘ including WCDMA and EV-DO chips, being imported to the US.
The case was over three patents owned by Broadcom to offer power management in handsets and Qualcomm is known to be trying to effect a work around ‘ however the chances are that some kind of lasting settlement will have to be reached between the two in the long term because the cost of re-working the chip will be far more expensive than any license. However Broadcom and Qualcomm have so many other legal issues to settle that it might prove impossible to reach terms on any agreement unless it involves all those other suits being settled. Funnily enough, in March of this year Qualcomm and Broadcom had already agreed to dismiss all their patent and trades secrets lawsuits, except for those which had already reached courts, of which this was one, the International Trade Commission dispute was another as was the ongoing European antitrust complaint.
Earlier this year, a unanimous federal jury in Santa Ana, California found that Qualcomm infringed the Broadcom patents, stating that the infringement had been willful (for that read deliberate), and this gave the judge the power to double the damages award for past infringement to $39.3 million. In a rare move Qualcomm was also made to pay Broadcom’s legal fees.
But later the same Judge said that due to a subsequent change in the federal law regarding willfulness, which came about in an unrelated appeal court, the damages would have to be changed back to $19.6 million.
Broadcom was given the option either to accept his final decision on enhanced damages or to seek a new trial in which the issue of willfulness would be tried all over again, along with Broadcom’s infringement claims. Broadcom has said that it will accept the damages at $19.6 million but will immediately pursue an injunction.
There remain other legal issues to be resolved between the two. Already a court has thrown out a counter suit by Qualcomm alleging that Broadcom infringed on essential patents for the H.264 standard, because Qualcomm failed to reveal its patent claims to a standards body.
There remains an anti-trust appeal in the US, and a series of international anti-trust suits that are being brought against Qualcomm, primarily around the terms under which it licenses its CDMA technology.