The US Federal Trade Commission objected to a move by mobile chip supplier Qualcomm to introduce internal Apple documents in its fight to stop the enforcement of a May antitrust ruling, reads a new report from Reuters.
Qualcomm on Tuesday submitted the internal Apple documents to U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, which included slides from an internal Apple presentation on how to pressure and “hurt” Qualcomm:
In the slides from internal Apple presentations, the iPhone maker outlined goals to ‘Create Leverage by Building Pressure’ and ‘Hurt Qualcomm Financially.’ … The slides were part of Qualcomm’s opening arguments from the Apple trial, in which the company outlined what its attorneys described as a targeted campaign by Apple to attack Qualcomm’s patent licensing model. In them, Apple discussed how to ‘devalue’ the kind of patents held by Qualcomm and ‘Reduce Apple’s Net Royalty to Qualcomm.’
The slides were part of the opening statement presentation in Qualcomm‘s separate civil trial against Apple in April but were never submitted during the company’s earlier trial with the FTC. If Koh accepts them, they would become part of the record that higher courts review when Qualcomm eventually files an appeal.
FTC officials have objected against the submissions of the slides calling it “improper, unfair, and prejudicial.”
“Qualcomm’s attempt to introduce excerpts from a document that it obtained in pre-trial discovery via a post-trial stay reply circumvents procedures intended to test the relevance and reliability of proffered evidence, and thus is unfair and prejudicial to the FTC,” the FTC filing reads.
“Had the document survived a high-priority objection, an Apple witness may have testified to, among other things, the document’s context and purpose and the meaning of the cited language,” the FTC wrote.
Qualcomm argued that it hadn’t had a chance to formally object to the slides. It said if it had been given an opportunity to argue against it, a witness from Apple could have testified to “the document’s context and purpose and the meaning of the cited language.”
Last month’s ruling forced Qualcomm to renegotiate its existing licensing terms so that its supply of modem chips is kept completely separate from any patent licensing agreement.
