This may not be a good day for Qualcomm at all!
In the ongoing fight between Qualcom and Apple
it seems as if Apple sees some light in the case.
Qualcomm demands patent royalties from Apple.

However there’s a counter-lawsuit from Apple that they have already been paying royalties twice, namely when building the devices and when selling them. So Qualcomm has already cashed in twice! The same opinion now comes from a Federal judge:

According to a new report from Reuters, a U.S. federal judge has issued a preliminary ruling in March 14^th that Qualcomm must pay Apple nearly $1 billion in patent royalty rebate payments. So that being stated, it’s not Apple who owes Qualcomm, instead it’s Qualcomm who owes Apple and 1 billion us$ is no small amount. The ruling comes from Judge Gonzalo Curiel of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. Although the ruling is set, this is not the final statement and it’s most likely that Qualcomm will fight back to avoid paying this large sum to Apple!

As Reuters explains, contract factories that build the iPhone generally paid Qualcomm “billions of dollars per year” to use Qualcomm’s patented technology in the iPhone. In turn, Apple would reimburse the factories. Further, Qualcomm and Apple had a separate agreement that would see Qualcomm pay Apple “a rebate on the iPhone patent payments if Apple agreed not to attack in court or with regulators.”

Two years ago, Apple sued Qualcomm and claimed that the chip maker had breached the agreement by not paying the patent royalty rebates. Qualcomm, however, said it stopped paying the rebates because Apple encouraged other smartphone makers to “complain to regulators” and made “false and misleading” statements to the Korean Fair Trade Commission.

This was the statement for Apple’s lawsuit:

And this is the debate of the FTC:

In this case however, Judge Curiel came down on Apple’s side, ruling that Qualcomm must pay Apple the missed patent rebate payments. In a statement, Apple said, “Qualcomm’s illegal business practices are harming Apple and the entire industry.”

All in all this is for sure not the last we have seen in the everlasting fight between Qualcomm and Apple. It just looks as if this is the new SCO vs. Unix drama.