Intel triggered into joining Qualcomm Apple spat

Qualcomm has accused Intel of cheating at modems with Apple’s help, but Intel’s weak public riposte is unlikely to sway much opinion in its favour.

Judging by the general quality of their press releases all three of the companies involved in this spat refuse to issue a single public utterance until every syllable has been pored over by battalions of lawyers. As a consequence, when they decide to slag each other off via the media the result falls pretty far short of Wildean in its wit.

To be fair to Qualcomm, its latest allegations weren’t strictly public, although you have to wonder what the source of the court filing leak that resulted in the rest of the world knowing about it was. Essentially Qualcomm is questioning how Apple was able to replace its modems with Intel ones in the latest iPhones and figured it must have given Intel trade secrets to ensure its modems were up to the job.

Intel’s General Counsel Steven Rodgers posted a riposte entitled ‘Qualcomm’s Rhetoric Pierced’, which promised all kinds of rebuttals, refutations and rebukes but instead delivered a disappointingly generic whinge that amounted to ‘how dare you?’ It started fairly promisingly with a round up of all the fines Qualcomm has been hit with over the past couple of years for violating competition laws.

But then it degenerated into a general purpose moan about how unfair the allegations are when everyone at Intel works really hard, actually. “We are proud of our engineers and employees who bring the world’s best technology solutions to market through hard work, sweat, risk-taking and great ideas,” pouted Rodgers. “Every day, we push the boundaries of computing and communication technologies. And, the proof is in the pudding: Last year, the U.S. Patent Office awarded more patents to Intel than to Qualcomm.”

The correct form of the proverb is ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating’, but if Intel chooses to keep its patents inside some form of dessert, who are we to judge? “For the most part, we have chosen, and will continue to choose, to respond to Qualcomm’s statements in court, not in public,” said Rogers, showing the acute judgment that you would expect of a senior Lawyer. Qualcomm has yet to publicly respond.