Apple's battle with Qualcomm shows no sign of slowing down. Just in the last few days Apple filed a counterclaim against Qualcomm. The company has now seemingly retaliated with three more patent claims back at Apple. Additionally, they are looking to ban the iPhone 8 and iPhone X from sale in the US.
Less than 24 hours following Apple's lawsuit against Qualcomm claiming the latter's Snapdragon processors infringe upon its patents, the chip maker has now retaliated by lodging another patent lawsuit against the Cupertino giant.
Apple on Wednesday escalated its legal spat with Qualcomm.
Reuters reported Tuesday that the US Federal Trade Commission has launched an investigation into Apple for potential patent infringement.
Animoji, perhaps the most gimmicky iPhone X feature, has earned Apple a lawsuit over infringing on an existing “Animoji” trademark held by a Japanese software development firm.
China's State Administration for Industry and Commerce is currently reviewing a complaint from 28 local developers who allege that the iPhone maker has abused its market position in the mainland to charge excessive fees and remove apps from App Store without fair reasoning.
Apple during last quarter made a one-time upfront payment of €1.7 billion to Nokia, or approximately $2 billion, to settle all litigation regarding patent disputes between the two companies, the Finnish firm has disclosed in today’s financial results.
A Florida company named CustomPlay yesterday filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida over the Siri-powered 'What Did He/She Say?' feature used in tvOS on the fourth-generation Apple TV.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association, an industry lobbying group which counts technology giants Google, Intel, Amazon, Facebook and Apple rival Samsung as its members, among others, has sided with the Cupertino giant in its escalating legal dispute with Qualcomm over smartphone royalties related to cellular technology.
Apple's legal battle with Qualcomm over excessive smartphone royalties has taken a turn for the worse as several Apple suppliers have officially sided with their key client to allege that Qualcomm has violated two sections of the U.S. antitrust law.
Qualcomm's legal spat with Apple and toxic rhetoric regarding cellular technology licensing agreements has been raging on for six months, and it would seem that the war is now starting to hurt Qualcomm's business.
In an interview with Fortune, Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf suggested in a more conciliatory tone that his firm's dispute with Apple over potentially billions of dollars in royalties on mobile chipsets should be resolved via an out of court settlement.
“There's not really anything new going on,” he said of the Apple dispute speaking at the Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, adding that “those things tend to get to resolved out of court and there's no reason why I wouldn't expect that to be the case here.”
“I don't have an announcement or anything so please don't ask,” the CEO added.
Apple dual-sourced cellular modem chips from both Qualcomm and Intel in about half of new iPhones last year, instead of buying all its chips from Qualcomm.
The Cupertino company also stopped paying its iPhone manufacturers for royalties owed to Qualcomm in April 2017, arguing Qualcomm abused its dominant position for mobile communications chips to charge excessive royalties.
The companies sued each other and Qualcomm a few weeks ago filed a patent infringement lawsuit seeking to have imports of some iPhones and iPads that contain competing mobile communications chips banned from the US.
As that filing will take 18 months to work through the system, iPhones and iPads released this and next year shouldn't be affected.
Having concluded its seven-year antitrust investigation against Google, dating back to 2010, the European Commission today announced it has imposed a record €2.4 billion fine on the company (about $2.7 billion) over search engine results.
The Commission took issue with the fact that Google has been promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results while demoting those of its competitors. The Commission said in July of last year that Google had “abused its dominant position by systematically favouring its comparison shopping service in its search result pages.”
The company now has 60 days to tell the Commission how it will accomplish the order.
If it doesn't comply with the ruling within 90 days and stop its illegal search practices in the European Union markets, the Commission can slap the company with additional fines.
According to The Guardian newspaper, European regulators have the power to fine Google up to five percent of the average daily worldwide turnover of its parent company, Alphabet.
European Commission Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement:
Google has come up with many innovative products and services that have made a difference to our lives. That's a good thing. But Google's strategy for its comparison shopping service wasn't just about attracting customers by making its product better than those of its rivals.
Google is going to appeal the decision.
The company said in a statement on its official blog that it believes the decision is in error:
We believe the European Commission's online shopping decision underestimates the value of those kinds of fast and easy connections. While some comparison shopping sites naturally want Google to show them more prominently, our data show that people usually prefer links that take them directly to the products they want, not to websites where they have to repeat their searches.
We think our current shopping results are useful and are a much-improved version of the text-only ads we showed a decade ago. Showing ads that include pictures, ratings, and prices benefits us, our advertisers, and most of all, our users. And we show them only when your feedback tells us they are relevant. Thousands of European merchants use these ads to compete with larger companies like Amazon and eBay.
Google is basically saying that it's not demoting competing comparison shopping products in search results, claiming it's simply packaging search results in a way that makes it easier for consumers to find what they want.
The European Commission has been conducting antitrust investigations into Google's Android software and its AdSense advertising products and services, too.