On Monday by San Diego time, the four Apple contract manufacturers who have to defend themselves against a Qualcomm contract suit in the Southern District of California (Foxconn/Hon Hai, Pegatron, Compal, and Wistron) each filed a third-party complaint for contractual indemnity against Apple, and based on what they say and what I can easily imagine, Apple is more than happy to join this additional fray. Here's Foxconn's complaint (this post continues below the document):
17-07-17 Foxconn Impleading Apple in Qualcomm Case by Florian Mueller on Scribd
Paragraph 22 of the complain with which Foxconn impleads Apple says that "at Apple's request, Foxconn must implead Apple into the action." While the complaint doesn't affirmatively say that Apple requested this invitation, paragraph 23 does state that "Apple has consented to be impleaded into the current action because it has an indemnification obligation to Foxconn, and so that it may assert various claims and defenses to Qualcomm's Complaint to minimize or eliminate its liability for such indemnification." So it's fair to say that, at a minimum, Apple gladly accepted this invitation. That presumption is based on the representation that Apple never intended to deny its indemnification obligation.
The fact that the contract manufacturers have decided to implead Apple into this case (adding yet another Qualcomm case to Apple's list of pending lawsuits) enables Apple to take even more direct control of its Qualcomm-related destiny.
In April, Qualcomm (in its counterclaims to Apple's Southern California complaint) already alleged that Apple had interfered with Qualcomm's contractual relationships with the contract manufacturers, which is why the related royalty payments ground to a halt a few months ago. Therefore, it really never made sense to me in the first place that Qualcomm brought a separate action against the contract manufacturers (in which it has meanwhile requested a preliminary injunction): the thing to do, in my view, would have been for Qualcomm to add the contract manufacturers to the case as third-party counterclaim defendants.
Now that the door has been opened to Apple in the contract manufacturers case and that Apple has apparently walked through it without anyone having to drag it into the case against its will, there are two cases pending in the same district court relating to the same patent royalty payments to Qualcomm over the same Apple products. Efficient use of judicial resources is something else.
In other news, Qualcomm's CEO has expressed his belief that the Apple dispute would be settled out of court. The question is, however, when. Depending on what decisions come down before, and also depending on what further headway the FTC and other competition authorities make against Qualcomm, the industry at large and, ultimately, consumers will hopefully benefit from it. This large-scale, cross-jurisdictional litigation will have been worth its while if, when all is said and done, chipset makers like Intel have a FRAND license to Qualcomm's standard-essential patents.
Share with other professionals via LinkedIn:
