The antitrust perspective of the Apple v. Qualcomm case
Click here to read the full article onlineApple and Qualcomm initiated an epic battle in 2017, which involved multiple jurisdictions and billions of dollars. Apple had a strong desire to cut down the license fee paid to Qualcomm, estimated 8-10 billion USD annually. Meanwhile, Qualcomm struck back to protect its business model. Finally, two companies settled in April 2019 due to the imminence of the 5G era. In the complaint, Apple’s main anti-trust claim was that Qualcomm violated its FRAND obligations and committed monopolization. The paper will analyze these two allegations and their merits, especially the definition of FRAND, the underlining anti-trust theory of the FRAND obligations, the market definition of the sale of premium LTE chipset, and the exclusionary acts committed by Qualcomm. Also, the paper will pay attention to other administrative penalties Qualcomm faced worldwide.