EU drops Qualcomm investigation

THE EU HAS DROPPED its four year investigation into Qualcomm after companies that had been moaning about the chipmaker charged excessive royalties on its technology patents withdrew their complaints.

The Commission said that since all complainants have now withdrawn their complaints, it was not worth wasting more time and money on the investigation.

Brussels began looking into Qualcomm's patent royalty rates for third generation or "3G" technology after a 2005 complaint by Nokia, Broadcom,Texas Instruments, Ericsson and two other competitors.

Nokia and Broadcom withdrew their complaints after reaching separate settlements with Qualcomm.

The probe focused on whether Qualcomm set "unreasonably high" royalty rates for patents after they had been adopted as part of Europe's 3G standard.

Don Rosenberg, executive vice president and general counsel at Qualcomm appeared to be pretending that the outfit had never done anything wrong and that after four years the EU couldn't find enough dirt to stick. He said that Qualcomm's business practices have "enhanced consumer welfare".

Andrew Gilbert, executive vice president and president, QIS and Qualcomm Europe, said that from the outset the company claimed there was no case to answer and that this decision by the EC, after four years of investigation, vindicates that position.

Of course if that had really been the case then Qualcomm would not have needed to negotiate all those settlements with telcos which meant that the EU had no one who was prepared to take the stand against it. µ