Patent war: Qualcomm vs Apple

The patent war between Apple and Qualcomm appear to be never-ending. The battle between the two has raged since January.

Now again, on November 30, Qualcomm filed three new patent infringement complaints against Apple in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in San Diego, asserting a total of 16 additional patents that Apple is currently using in its iPhones.

One of the cases is a companion civil lawsuit to a new complaint also filed on November 30 with the ITC that seeks the same remedy of banning iPhones with Intel chips. The other two cases are civil patent infringement lawsuits.

The new complaints represent the latest development in a long-standing dispute and follows Apple’s countersuit on November 29 against Qualcomm, which alleged that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon mobile phone chips infringed on Apple patents.

The patent complaints range from power-management technologies to autofocus cameras. Five of the patents are also included in a new complaint filed in the International Trade Commission. Like the patents Qualcomm asserted at the ITC in July, all of the additional 16 patents are non-standards essential patents implemented outside of the modem.

According to Qualcomm, Apple is using each of these patents in its devices without paying for them.

Qualcomm stated that "Apple is the quintessential example of a company engaging in patent hold-out and has repeatedly pursued a patent hold-out strategy using its enormous financial resources to harm innovators of technologies it uses."