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A court arbitration case between Qualcomm and Blackberry has ended today awarding Blackberry Inc. a sum of $814.9 million, plus interest and attorney's fees, on royalties charged for past sales. The decision is binding and Qualcomm will not be able to appeal.
The dispute reportedly related to Qualcomm setting caps on certain types of royalty payments and whether that cap applied to payments made in advance by Blackberry in its Qualcomm-powered phones. Blackberry alleged it had overpaid Qualcomm over a period of six years (2010 to 2015), due to this. Still, hadn't Blackberry sales been faltering at that stage, the amount would have been much higher.
This comes at a time when Qualcomm has been facing off in a number of legal battles, including Apple, and has taken the news very matter-of-factually: “While Qualcomm does not agree with the decision, it is binding and not appealable. The arbitration decision was limited to prepayment provisions unique to BlackBerry’s license agreement with Qualcomm and has no impact on agreements with any other licensee”, read the official statement, underlining this decision shouldn't get mixed up with other litigation.
Blackberry's business on the other hand has been stabilizing, despite its almost complete departure from the smartphone business. It's recently been leveraging its patent portfolio and looking at legal action to clear the balance sheets. This, however, was a case of overpaying for something it shouldn't have paid in the first place.
There will be a final hearing in late May to determine the final and full amount to be repaid, but Blackberry suits are guaranteed to be popping corks right now.
KitGuru Says: No one likes a company-turned-patent troll, but businesses are even less inclined to overpay for things they shouldn't. Qualcomm will insist in keeping this watertight so it has no legal bearing on everything else it's facing.
company-turned-patent-troll; what about the companies that overcharge massively like Qualcomm? Just because they also develop, that does not mean they are not a different type of patent-troll.
If only we could get rid of patents. But that’s just not going to happen.
Patents are a tricky subject though.
I completely agree that if I invent something, I should be able to hold rights over it in some capacity. Imagine if a small company invented something really innavotive and ground breaking, to have it copied by a larger company who could refine it and sell it to millions, making possibly billions while the original inventers are going bankrupt.
However, purposely vague patents and patenting simple ideas should be made illegal. Patents are there for a reson, a good reson, but like every system ever created, it’s an abused system.
I think patents should protected until they become part of the public domain. So as soon as you have launched a product the patents needed for that public expire. It takes time for a major company to use those patents, so even as a small company you’ll have exclusivity for a while, maybe even a few years.
This way it still pays to develop new technology, but we get rid of patent trolls and innovation is supported, because everybody is free to build of other people’s inventions without having to pay a fortune. Basically, it’s how science is supposed to work.
I see where you’re coming from and kind of agree.
Patents should have a shorter expiration time and past a certain point, shouldn’t be able to be renewed. But that would still leave the small companies out of pocket.
I could still see a small, 5 man company that comes up with something amazing but with no resources to truely push it to market getting shirked. A larger company would just wait for the patent to expire after a year or so, then release their own implimentation.
We really could prattle on about this all day tbh. It’s one of those subjects where the balance is near impossible to get right.
We both agree that patent rules are too easy to abuse for various reasons.
As shown by the apple vs samsung rubbish we had a few years ago, patents need sorting still.
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