A US appeals court on Tuesday reversed a lower court ruling against chip supplier Qualcomm in an antitrust lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission.
A US appeals court on Tuesday reversed a lower court ruling against chip supplier Qualcomm in an antitrust lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission. The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals also vacated an injunction that would have required Qualcomm to change its intellectual property licensing practices. The decision was a major vindication for the San Diego-based company, the largest supplier of chips for mobile phones and a key generator of wireless communications technology. Qualcomm was fighting a May 2019 decision by US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California. Koh sided with the FTC, writing that Qualcomm’s practice of requiring phone makers to sign a patent license agreement before selling them chips “strangled competition” and harmed consumers. But the appeals court, in a 3-0 ruling written by Circuit Judge Consuelo Callahan, ruled that Qualcomm had no duty to license its patents to rival chip suppliers and that it was not anticompetitive to require phone makers to sign a license agreement.
