Federal judge hits Qualcomm with an injunction — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{WCDMA products for the U.S. market forbidden} Federal judge hits Qualcomm with an injunction

Qualcomm HQ

2 Jan 2008 at 20:16 GMT Timo Poropudas

Federal District Judge James V. Selna has issued an injunction against certain Qualcomm products for the United States market that were found to infringe three Broadcom patents.

The ruling provides a "sunset" provision that stays the order until Jan. 31, 2009 for QChat and 1x/EV-DO products that were found to infringe any of the three patents by providing Qualcomm a limited license, subject to an ongoing royalty payment. This license is limited to products that were sold to customers on or before the jury verdict was delivered on May 29, 2007. The '010 and '317 patents apply only to Qualcomm's QChat and 1x/EV-DO products. Qualcomm says that it is continuing the development of work-around solutions for the '010 and '317 patents.

The order imposes an immediate injunction on WCDMA products for the U.S. market that were found to infringe the '686 video encoding patent.

Qualcomm today announced the availability of new chips that have already been sampled to customers and expects to have hardware and software work-arounds to the '686 patent commercially available in handsets before the end of the first calendar quarter of 2008.

According to a Broadcom press relese, the injunction, effective today, also prohibits Qualcomm from engaging in a broad range of additional activities. According to the terms of the injunction, Qualcomm is prohibited, for example, from advertising, marketing or otherwise promoting; entering or fulfilling product orders; setting, determining or approving terms of sale; providing customer service or technical support; negotiating or entering into licensing, representative, reseller or distributor agreements; developing, designing or manufacturing; writing, modifying or updating software; developing or modifying circuits; writing, modifying or updating hardware description code language; or taping out or preparing documentation for, infringing products.

Broadcom filed the case in District Court in Santa Ana, Calif., in May 2005. On May 29, 2007, a unanimous jury returned a verdict finding that Qualcomm infringed three Broadcom patents and awarded USD 19.64 million in damages for past infringement.

The Santa Ana case is one of several cases in which Broadcom continues to pursue claims against Qualcomm regarding patent infringement, anti-competitive behavior and fraud issues. Qualcomm has either lost or withdrawn all of the patent infringement cases it brought against Broadcom.