Recently, a U.S. appeals court upheld a lower court's decision to overturn an earlier verdict of a $173 million patent infringement charge against Qualcomm Inc. QCOM by wireless chipset designer ParkerVision Inc. In 2011, ParkerVision claimed that Qualcomm had violated its patents associated with the conversion mechanism of electromagnetic signals from higher frequencies to lower frequencies.
The technical advantage of this technology is that receivers of mobile phone and tablet will become smaller, more power efficient and highly effective. Qualcomm had denied the charges labelled against it. The federal judge ruled that ParkerVision’s litigation had insufficient evidence of patent infringement. However, the judge also rejected Qualcomm’s appeal to rule the patent invalid. ParkerVision had decided to seek a review of the judgment.
Notably, ParkerVision had filed two patent litigation cases against Qualcomm. The first one, which was recently overturned by a federal judge, is related to a technology used in $4 chipset. However, the second case involves a more complex technology which includes patents related to the technology of mobile device’s information sharing with a wireless tower. This technology costs $20 or more per mobile device. The appeals court’s verdict for the second case is still pending.
Recently, the European Union’s (EU) Competition Commission announced that the regulatory body has initiated two probes to determine whether the company has been abusing its dominant position in the market. In Feb 2015, Qualcomm paid a fine of $975 million and had also agreed to lower licensing fees in order to settle a 14-month old investigation in China.
Qualcomm is the largest baseband chipset developer for mobile handsets globally. The company’s chips are used in Apple Inc.’s AAPL iOS software, Microsoft Corp.’s MSFT Windows Phone operating systems and Google Inc. GOOGL developed Android software. Qualcomm currently carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).
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