Qualcomm announced that a jury in the US District Court for the Southern District of California found that the Apple iPhone 7, 7 Plus, 8, 8 Plus and X infringe two Qualcomm patents, and the Apple iPhone 8, 8 Plus and X also infringe a third patent. The jury awarded Qualcomm USD 31 million in damages for infringement of the patents from July 2017, when the lawsuit was filed, through the end of the trial.
This is the latest victory for the chipmaker in its global legal battle against Apple, which has accused Qualcomm of unfair licensing terms. Qualcomm retaliated with patent infringement suits, and in the past six months, patent courts in China and Germany have ruled that Apple is infringing Qualcomm non-standard essential patents and issued injunctions on infringing devices.
The three infringed patents in the California case support different smartphone features. Patent No. 8,838,949 enables flashless booting, which eliminates the cost and footprint of separate flash memory and allows a smartphone to connect to the internet quickly after being powered on. Patent No. 9,535,490 enables the applications on a smartphone to get their data to and from the internet quickly by acting as a smart 'traffic cop' between the applications processor and the modem. Qualcomm's Patent No. 8,633,936 enables high performance and rich visual graphics for games while increasing a smartphone’s battery life. These patents are outside of the modem processors and are not essential to practice any cellular standard, Qualcomm said.
