Court: Broadcom win against Qualcomm stands

While you were contemplating the origins of cranberry sauce in a can, a federal judge Friday let stand a jury verdict in Santa Ana, Calif., that found Qualcomm Inc. infringed on three Broadcom Corp. patents.
The “willfulness” finding against Qualcomm, however, was dropped-as was the doubling of damages in the case-as expected. Due to an unrelated, precedent-setting case settled after the original August verdict in the Broadcom-Qualcomm case, the bar for establishing “willfulness” has been raised.
The upshot is that Broadcom accepted the judge’s ruling and proceeded to request an injunction against the importation of Qualcomm’s offending chips. Qualcomm also owes Broadcom the $19.6 million that the Santa Ana jury awarded it in August. Broadcom had the option to retry the case.
Broadcom’s requested injunction seeks to stop Qualcomm from “making, using, selling and developing third-generation W-CDMA and EV-DO cellular chips that infringe any of the patents” involved in the case, according to a statement Friday by Broadcom. The court has yet to set a schedule for hearings in the injunction request.
According to analyst Mark McKechnie at American Technology Research, the possible impacts of an injunction on Qualcomm “would not likely be material to Qualcomm’s businesses,” because an injunction would stop the importation of “bare chips” rather than handsets containing them. Qualcomm’s chips are installed in its customers’ handsets overseas, then imported into the United States.
Qualcomm and Broadcom have said they continue to discuss a cross-licensing agreement that would curtail patent-infringement cases between them; analysts view individual cases such as the one in Santa Ana as establishing the two companies’ respective bargaining positions in that effort. Other cases, such as one before the U.S. International Trade Commission, are ongoing.
Meanwhile, Qualcomm’s patent-infringement case against Nokia Corp. in the United Kingdom began today in British High Court. Qualcomm claims Nokia infringes on two European patents in GSM/GPRS technology; Nokia denies the charge. Qualcomm and Nokia, too, are embroiled in a drawn-out effort to reach a cross-licensing agreement; their most recent agreement expired in April.