Qualcomm sues Apple some more – yay

Qualcomm has managed to dig up some more patents it reckons arch-enemy Apple has infringed upon and decided to turn that into three new legal actions.

With Christmas coming and the year drawing to a close we wouldn’t be surprised if Qualcomm’s horde of lawyers was keen to demonstrate a late flurry of activity. Apple has presumably been suspected of these infringements for some time, this litigation-athon having kicked-off at the start of the year, but there’s no harm in keeping a few up your sleeve is there?

“Qualcomm has filed three new patent infringement complaints against Apple in the U.S. District Court, asserting a total of 16 additional patents that Apple is currently using in its iPhones,” said the Qualcomm announcement.

“Five of these patents are also included in a new complaint filed in the International Trade Commission. Like the patents we asserted at the ITC in July, all of the 16 patents are non-standards essential patents implemented outside of the modem. Apple continues to use each of these patents in its devices without paying for them.”

It doesn’t really matter what these specific patents refer to, but here they are for anyone who’s into that sort of thing: U.S. Patent No. 9,154,356, 9,473,336, 8,063,674, 7,693,002, 9,552,633, 8,971,861, 7,834,591, 8,768,865, 8,229,043, 8,447,132, 9,024,418, 8,683,362, 8,497,928, 8,665,239, 9,203,940 and 7,844,037. Some of them even refer to patents Qualcomm got from Palm back in the day. It’s not obvious why Qualcomm has seen fit to get three law suits for the price of one out of this but, frankly, who cares?

This could all just be a bit of legal tit-for-tat after Apple thought it would be funny to sue Qualcomm for infringing on its patents earlier this week. Next they’ll be saying Snapdragon is a flower, and Apple trees also have flowers, so that’s an infringement too.