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^{Oops! We missed 200 000 Qualcomm documents} 19 California lawyers face sanctions

US Magistrate Judge Barbara Major is considering sanctions against 19 attorneys who represented Qualcomm in a patent lawsuit the cell phone chipmaker filed against rival Broadcom, reports news agency AP.

The sanctions are a threat to the careers of attorneys from two Silicon Valley firms. They also keep up the pressure on Qualcomm that has via legal activity become the world's second-largest chipmaker for cell phones.

Qualcomm is inder investigation is several countries for it licence pricing. It his also involved in a large patent litigation case with Nokia.

The judge said she was struggling to understand how Qualcomm and its lawyers committed "the fundamental and monumental error" of failing to share more than 200,000 pages of documents with Broadcom until after trial.

Neither lawyers for Qualcomm nor the 19 attorneys it hired, and is now arguing with, had clear answers.

The parties dueled in federal court over who is to blame for what a judge called "gross misconduct on a massive scale" at a past trial.

Qualcomm attorney William Boggs called the failure to produce the thousands of documents an unintentional mistake. Qualcomm already has been fined USD 8.5 million and ordered to pay Broadcom's attorney fees.

The sanctions hearing focuses on the actions of two law firms that worked the case for Qualcomm, Day Casebeer Madrid & Batchelder LLP of Cupertino and Heller Ehrman , which has offices in Menlo Park.

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