Qualcomm has had a legal battle with the FTC for nearly 8 months now over antitrust concerns. The US Federal Trade Commission has accused Qualcomm of antitrust business practices over chipset licensing last August, saying how the company is taking advantage of the situation by using its dominant position to excessively sell licencing fees to mobile phone manufacturers, however the US Court of Appeals concluded that there is no reasonable evidence for antitrust.
Now, the FTC has had a year to appeal and counteract the claims, and having no solid evidence and that the FTC would not be winning anyway, the FTC finally decided to give Qualcomm the winning shot.
“Given the significant headwinds facing the Commission in this matter, the FTC will not petition the Supreme Court to review the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in FTC v. Qualcomm,” said Acting FTC Chairwoman Rebecca Kelly Slaughter. “The FTC’s staff did an exceptional job presenting the case, and I continue to believe that the district court’s conclusion that Qualcomm violated the antitrust laws was entirely correct and that the court of appeals erred in concluding otherwise.” she added.
While the FTC won the trial, they lost to having an appeal. The judges concluded that Qualcomm did not practice any sort of antitrust behaviour. Their ruling was that Qualcomm’s licencing practices were not anticompetitive because they are not bound to antitrust laws to rival chipset suppliers.
Qualcomm happily welcomed the decision made by the panels.
“Qualcomm reached its present status by investing billions of dollars in research and development and discovering technologies used by billions of people around the world,” Don Rosenberg Qualcomm’s general counsel said in a statement.
After this loss, the FTC chased after Google and Facebook accusing them of the same antitrust practices.
Sources: Telecoms.com, Tech Times
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