Synopsis qualcomm essay

In a nutshell, the court’s theory of harm was that manufacturers are largely compelled to accept Qualcomm’s restrictive licensing terms due to its near-monopoly in the chipset market. And these agreements further secured the exclusivity Qualcomm needed to maintain its dominance.

Similarly, public utilities have occasionally sought to circumvent regulatory price controls by tying the regulated service to an unregulated complement, such as tying telephone service to a lease for telephone equipment. A second component of the Qualcomm decision is more precarious.

FRAND is usually interpreted to preclude the SEP owner from exploiting patent holdup to charge unreasonably high royalties or refusing to license its competitors. Qualcomm is a major licensor of SEPs relating to cellular communications.

There is some precedent for finding antitrust liability where a firm’s refusal to deal with a rival is motivated solely by the prospect of excluding the rival, although this doctrine is very narrow in scope. Nevertheless, Judge Koh concluded that Qualcomm’s refusals satisfied the relevant criteria for antitrust liability.