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Qualcomm Inc. has been fined 1.03 trillion won (approximately $853 million) by South Korea's antitrust regulator:
The South Korean Fair Trade Commission said Wednesday that the company licensed its key patents only to mobile-phone makers and didn't properly negotiate the terms of its licenses. The agency also said Qualcomm coerced its customers into signing patent license contracts when selling its chips used in mobile phones in the country, and it didn't fairly pay for the use of patents held by other phone makers.
The decision from the home country of Samsung Electronics Co. adds to investor concern that the San Diego-based chipmaker, which is also the subject of investigations in the U.S. and Europe, may struggle to defend its lucrative licensing business. Qualcomm gets the majority of profit -- $6.5 billion in its most recent financial year -- from selling the right to use technology that's fundamental to all modern phone systems.
Qualcomm, calling the decision "unprecedented and insupportable," said it will appeal the decision in Seoul's High Court. The KFTC ruling doesn't go into effect immediately and Qualcomm will seek a stay from the courts while it appeals, said Don Rosenberg, the company's general counsel.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 31 2016, @03:52AM
Qualcomm is being sued all across the world for their patent abuse.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 31 2016, @04:29AM
It is *the* key aspect of their cell phone business. Every cell phone sold pays the qualcomm tax.
They went from a 'maybe' to the forefront because of patent litigation. They are quite proud of their history.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday December 31 2016, @05:11AM
It is also temporary... 20 years post implementation, the tax will be gone, and the incentive will be there for the next innovator to make an equally meaningful contribution to technology.
Well, that's the theory - more often the entrenched players just freeze out new technology until the inventors' claims expire and then they roll it out license free to a world that didn't know what they were missing for the previous 20 years.
If I end up paying $50 to Qualcomm over the period of the patent, it's probably worth that to me for the extra functionality they brought to market. I'd be more pissed about tech that I'd be willing to pay $500 for being suppressed from the market for 20 years, or maybe forever, because the entrenched players can't find a way to work with the inventors or whoever holds the patent rights.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 31 2016, @05:16AM
Most of these patents are minor improvement over the existing tech - each by themselves, they are useless, so can't stick a price tag on them.
BTW, in fast moving tech sectors, 20 years is eternity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 31 2016, @06:55AM
Most of their innovation has been bought from other companies at this point. They just finished buying a parts company. The place where I live was paid for because they bought out another company...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 31 2016, @11:17PM
Hundreds of billions USD buys a lot. You'd have to be some kind of an idiot not to be able to hit on some decent long term acquisitions (of midsize and large companies with existing products, not startups) with that kind of cash horde.