Apple and Qualcomm settle royalty dispute


Apple and Qualcomm said Tuesday that they had agreed to dismiss their dueling lawsuits around the world, The New York Times reports. As a trial had started in a San Diego federal courtroom in an Apple complaint against Qualcomm, the companies said they had reached a six-year agreement under which Apple will pay unspecified royalties on Qualcomm patents.
Apple, maker of the iPhone, and Qualcomm, the biggest provider of mobile chips, had been battling over how Qualcomm charges royalties on its patents on mobile chips. Qualcomm in the 1990s pioneered technology now critical in mobile devices, allowing it to charge royalties on smartphones even if they don't have Qualcomm chips. The settlement suggests Apple will drop its objection to the arrangement, assuming Qualcomm's royalties aren't set too high. Qualcomm shares jumped by more than 20 percent after the news, CNBC reports.
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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.
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