Qualcomm CEO Expects Out-of-Court Settlement in Apple Legal Battle

Apple and Qualcomm might be fighting hard in the courtroom, but that’s not where the battle is going to end. That’s according to the latter company’s CEO, who states that he believes the issue will most likely be settled out of court.

In an interesting turn of events, Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf has said that out of court settlement with Apple is still possible, reads a new story from Fortune. Smartphone manufacturing giant Apple and chipmaking company Qualcomm have been fighting legal spat in different countries for the past six months.

“There’s not really anything new going on,” Mollenkopf said speaking at Fortune‘s Brainstorm Tech Conference in Aspen, Colorado. About the Apple dispute, he explained: “those things tend to get to resolved out of court and there’s no reason why I wouldn’t expect that to be the case here.”

But Mollenkopf said he didn’t have any specific news announcing a settlement was on the way. “I don’t have an announcement or anything so please don’t ask,” he said at the conference.

The dispute between the two companies started after Apple deployed modem chipsets from both Qualcomm and Intel for its latest iPhones. The Cupertino-based iPhone maker capped the abilities of Qualcomm X12 LTE modem to make it work identically to the one supplied by Intel.

The battle escalated after Apple accused Qualcomm of overcharging for the use of its basic patents and stopped paying its contract manufacturers for royalties owed to Qualcomm.

Qualcomm then countersued Apple for breach of the agreement and recently filed complaints with the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) and the US District Court for the Southern District of California asking for a temporary ban on US imports of iPhones that use Intel modem.

In its lawsuit, Qualcomm highlighted six of its patents pertaining to performance and extended battery life and blamed Apple for infringing its patents related to media streaming.

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