Qualcomm and Apple are embroiled in a lawsuit against each other, but recently it seems that Apple is not fighting the fight alone as a bunch of pretty big tech companies have banded together to stand up against the chipmaker, something that Qualcomm doesn’t seem to be too thrilled about (obviously).Recently the company has come out and accused the companies of launching a “coordinated effort aimed at misdirecting” trade regulators, whom Qualcomm has previously run afoul of. In fact prior to Apple filing their own lawsuit against Qualcomm, the company has run into legal troubles with various regulators around the world, and was even hit with a lawsuit by the FTC not too long ago.
Qualcomm is trying to get the ITC to ban the imports of iPhones into the US. The reason why the tech companies have banded together is that they think that should the ITC agree to Qualcomm’s demands, it could have a ripple effect on the rest of the industry and will severely impact the supply of devices that are being imported into the US.
However Qualcomm has argued that the ban on imports of iPhones won’t hurt in the long run, as “Apple can purchase and utilize any LTE modem it chooses so long as it does not infringe Qualcomm’s asserted patents.”