German court says nein to Qualcomm's 'groundless' patent suit against Apple

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A GERMAN COURT has pretty much told Qualcomm to do one over its second lawsuit levied against Apple over a patent dispute.

For some time, Qualcomm has been scrapping with Apple over Cupertino's use of its chips and other Qualcomm-related tech in its older iPhones, which the chipmaker claims Apple owes it royalties for.

A flurry of suing and counter-suing over patents and royalties has been going on between the firms for the past couple of years.

In Germany, Qualcomm recently won a recent case to ban sales of some older iPhones in the nation, and as such seemed to decide to play its hand again at suing Apple over patent infringement.

However, this time, the German court decided not to side with the US chipmaker and instead dismissed the lawsuit, branding it in an initial verbal decision, according to Reuters, as groundless.

Apple sent a statement to Reuters that, to us at least, has more than a little tone of smugness and self-importance - who'd have thought that from Apple...

"We are happy with the decision and thank the court for their time and diligence," the Cupertino firm said. "We regret Qualcomm's use of the court to divert attention from their illegal behaviour that is the subject of multiple lawsuits and proceedings around the world."

Qualcomm, on the other hand, was unsurprisingly not chuffed about the decision.

"Apple has a history of infringing our patents," said Don Rosenberg, Qualcomm executive vice president and general counsel. "While we disagree with the Mannheim court's decision and will appeal, we will continue to enforce our intellectual property rights against Apple worldwide."

That would hint that Qualcomm is ready for another round of court battles with Apple lawyers, who seem like they are never out of court given all the cases folks and firms try to bring against the house Jobs and Woz built.

We wouldn't be surprised if Apple was beavering away at making its own in-house chips ready for the next wave of iDevices. Taking care of its own chips would potentially put Apple out of the direct firing line of the likes of Qualcomm.

But as this is the tech world we're talking about with plenty of patent trolls lurking around, we wouldn't be surprised to see more tech firms take a pop at Cupertino within the courts. µ