The legal battles between Apple and Qualcomm seems to have taken the hot seat nowadays. In the last several years, all we would hear about was the legal battles between Samsung and Apple, but now Qualcomm has taken the thunder from Samsung. Apple and Qualcomm are both accusing each other of various patent infringements, but the main battle revolves around royalty fees for smartphone chips that allow iPhones to connect to wireless networks.
In a separate but similar case, the Federal Trade Commission is suing Qualcomm where the FTC is investigating chipmaker’s business practices related to mobile chips. Because of how much market power Qualcomm has, they’re alleges to have abused their power, forcing Apple into exclusivity deals. Qualcomm has been subject to similar anti-trust investigations in other markets around the world as well where hefty fines carry.
In FTC’s suit against Qualcomm, apparently Apple will be the first to see punishment, somehow. A judge on Thursday issued a fine of $25,000 per day against Apple for withholding evidence, according to a report from Bloomberg. To put it into perspective, that’s equal to the profits Apple made every 16 seconds in the last fiscal year.
The reason why Apple is being fined is because it failed to disclose documentation related to the Qualcomm case. The fine will further increase if Apple fails to turn over appropriate documentation by December 29th. Apple has stated that it has already turned over more than 2.6 million documents by he December 15th deadline.
“We have already produced millions of documents for this case and are working hard to deliver the millions more which have been requested in an unprecedented time frame,” Apple spokesman Josh Rosenstock said. “We plan to appeal this ruling.”
