Trade Commission agrees to investigate Apple for alleged Qualcomm patent violation
The U.S. International Trade Commission has announced that it will be investigating Apple following allegations from Qualcomm that the Cupertino-based company infringed on Qualcomm's patents with the iPhone 7. Some models of iPhone 7 use an Intel modem rather than a Qualcomm one, and while Qualcomm does not claim that the modem itself violates any patents, Apple's implementation of that modem reportedly does.
Earlier this summer, Qualcomm filed the claim in early July, and is seeking to keep the infringing products from being imported into the U.S. Going back further, Intel and Samsung filed a statement in support of the ITC's investigation into Qualcomm's licensing agreements, specifically whether those agreement violate Qualcomm's Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) commitments. On the other side, a group of companies, including Alphabet (Google's parent), Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook, support Apple in this case, saying that pursuing this reported patent violation will ultimately harm consumers and the market in general.
Qualcomm released the following statement:
The ITC plans to complete this investigation in the next 45 days.
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