If you thought that maybe the legal battle between Qualcomm and Apple could be resolved amicably, it certainly doesn’t feel that way at the moment. This is because according to the rumors, Qualcomm is apparently planning to ask the International Trade Commission to ban the imports of iPhones into the US.The report from Bloomberg claims that nothing has been set in motion yet as apparently the discussions are private, and rightfully so. For those unfamiliar with what’s going on, both Apple and Qualcomm are suing each other. Apple filed the first lawsuit against the company over alleged unfair use of patents.
Qualcomm then filed a countersuit against Apple and recently the company revealed that Apple was withholding royalty payments to them as a result of this, thus forcing Qualcomm to adjust their financials and lower forecasts due to the fact that they’d be missing out on royalties that they would have gotten from Apple.
Apple’s CEO Tim Cook also revealed that Qualcomm had not offered fair terms to Apple with regards to patent royalties. According to Cook, “That’s both the price and the business terms. Qualcomm has not made such an offer to Apple. I don’t believe anyone’s going to decide to enjoin the iPhone based on that. There’s plenty of case law around that subject. But we shall see.”
Whether or not the US ITC will give in to Qualcomm’s request to ban the import of the iPhone remains to be seen, but in the meantime it certainly looks like the spat between both companies will not be going away anytime soon.