July looks like being an interesting month for Qualcomm as the Delaware Chancery Court starts to hear its lawsuit with Nokia and with this week's lawsuit in the US Appeals Court against Broadcom.
The Delaware case is about the level of royalties the Appeals Court case is about whether Qualcomm infringed on a Broadcom patent on a power reduction technology.
Qualcomm is supported in the Appeals Court case by a number of companies which use the disputed technology including Kyocera, Motorola, RIM, Samsung, LG, Sanyo Fisher, T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and Palm.
Last summer the US International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled against Qualcomm, but an order banning the use of the technology was not made, pending the appeal being heard this week.
The last time Broadcom and Qualcomm went to court the judge reported six lawyers representing Qualcomm to the California Bar Association after behaviour, described by the judge, as 'exceptional misconduct'.
It turned out that a Qualcomm denial that it was represented on an industry standards-setting body was disproved by easily discoverable email evidence which Qualcomm and its lawyers were legally obliged to disclose to the court, but didn't.
So July could turn out to be an interesting month for Qualcomm's legal fortunes but, with the US appeals system being what it is, final resolution of anything could be a long time away.
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