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Ericsson announces withdrawal of Qualcomm complaint with the European Commission
(EquityBites Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Mobile technology and communications company Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) has withdrawn its complaint to the European Commission regarding Qualcomm's (Nasdaq-NMS:QCOM) WCDMA (3G) licensing activities.
The company announced toady that it will, however, continue its ongoing dialogue with competition authorities around the world in relation to Qualcomm's licensing practices.
Ericsson said that its goal remains to ensure a robust, enforceable and fair IPR regime for standards, particularly those relating to 3G and 4G wireless technologies.
In October 2005, Ericsson, Nokia (NYSE:NOK), Broadcom (Nasdaq_NMS:BRCM), Panasonic, NEC and Texas Instruments (NYSE:TXN) had filed coordinated complaints alleging that Qualcomm was both violating antitrust laws and breaching its own commitments to standard-setting bodies to license its declared essential patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms.
In support of these complaints, the companies had filed substantial economic evidence that Qualcomm's conduct has caused mobile phone users to pay billions of Euros in unnecessary costs.
In parallel with the investigation by the European Commission, antitrust authorities in other jurisdictions initiated investigations against Qualcomm.
As a result, the Korean Fair Trade Commission imposed orders concerning Qualcomm's restrictive practices and imposed the highest fine in its history on Qualcomm.
Also, the Japanese Fair Trade Commission ruled that Qualcomm has engaged in licensing practices in breach of antitrust laws, and ordered Qualcomm to cease and desist certain licensing practices, in particular, from extracting inadequately remunerated licenses from its licensees.
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(c) 2009 M2 COMMUNICATIONS
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