The year 2017 did not turn out to be a good year for Qualcomm so far. The company has been in hot water since Apple filed an Antitrust lawsuit against it earlier this year. Both tech giants have been at war since then. In a most recent move, Qualcomm is now filing a new lawsuit against the fruit company with an intent of halting the sales and production of iPhone across China.
While China is not Apple’s prime market when it comes to sales, however, it is the country where a majority of Apple devices is manufactured and assembled.Qualcomm claims that Apple is infringing on chip maker’s patent, and their spokesperson claims that “Apple employs technologies invented by Qualcomm without paying for them.”
Qualcomm is targeting three different patents that Apple has supposedly infringed on. The biggest one among the three involves the 3D Touch (pressure sensitive display tech) that Apple has been using since the launch of iPhone 6s (excluding the iPhone SE). Qualcomm’s spokesperson further added that these patents are “examples of the many Qualcomm technologies that Apple uses to improve its devices and increase its profits.”
The lawsuit was officially filed by Qualcomm, against Apple, on September 29 in the Beijing court. The court, however, is yet to make the exact details of the lawsuit available to the public.
Just one day before this news broke, Qualcomm was fined (and appealing) $773 million USD by the Taiwan Fair Trade Commision. The chip maker says that the $773 million fine won’t have any affect on the company. Earlier this year, Apple came out victorious over two patent disagreements.
If Qualcomm somehow manages to halt sale and manufacturing of iPhone in China, it is going to be disastrous for the Cupertino based company. So, this patent infringement battle between Apple and Qualcomm has entered into an interesting phase.