Qualcomm wins latest legal battle with Broadcom

Qualcomm gained another legal victory over rival vendor Broadcom in the long-running legal saga surrounding the two chipmakers.

Qualcomm said that the United States District Court for the Southern District of California granted Qualcomm's motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Broadcom. Broadcom's suit had sought to declare that certain Qualcomm patents were "exhausted and unenforceable." The court ruled that Broadcom did not identify any specific patents which were allegedly exhausted and that Broadcom's claims of legal injuries were too speculative.

Broadcom sued Qualcomm in October, and said Qualcomm had been misusing its patents to suppress industry competition.

Broadcom had argued that it only needed to show the type of patent--chipsets used in handsets and for wireless communications--to have the court make the patents unenforceable. The company said the threat of patent litigation made some of its customers hesitant to buy from Broadcom.

Correction, March 17, 2009: Due to a reporting error, this article originally referred to a Qualcomm-Broadcom patent dispute involving video patents. That is a separate case from the one reported above.

For more:
- see this article [1]
- see this release [2]

Related Articles:
Appeals court adds another layer to Qualcomm-Broadcom [3] dispute
Broadcom wins round over Qualcomm in patent litigation [4]
Broadcom gets the latest victory in patent fight [5] with Qualcomm
Qualcomm [6], Broadcom each gain in latest court rulings
Qualcomm: [7] No deal with Broadcom

[4]