The EU has dropped its anti-trust case against Qualcomm. The move follows the withdrawal of a complaint by Ericsson.
Nokia withdrew its complaint earlier this year, following the settlement of its long-running multiple legal actions with Qualcomm. Broadcom, another complainant, also withdrew its complaint after a legal settlement with Qualcomm, and the other complainants, TI, Panasonic and NEC have said they will withdraw their complaints.
"All the complainants have now withdrawn or indicated their intention to withdraw their complaints and the commission has therefore to decide where best to focus its resources and priorities," said the EU.
The EU's action against Qualcomm alleged that Qualcomm refused to license CDMA patents "on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms", which Qualcomm had undertaken to do in return for the adoption of CDMA technology as the base for 3G wireless communications. The EU alleged that Qualcomm offered lower royalty rates to handset customers who buy chipsets exclusively from Qualcomm.
"The Qualcomm case has raised important issues about the pricing of technology after its adoption as part of an industry standard", says the EU, "in practice, such assessments may be very complex, and any antitrust enforcer has to be careful about overturning commercial agreements. The Commission has investigated whether the royalties that Qualcomm has been charging since its patented technology became part of Europe's 3G standard are unreasonably high. The Commission has not as yet reached formal conclusions."
The anti-trust authorities in Japan found Qualcomm guilty of anti-competitive behaviour by getting NEC, Panasonic and Mitsubishi to sign licences for Qualcomm's technology which had a clause saying that the Japanese companies would not sue Qualcomm, even if Qualcomm violated the Japanese companies' patents, and that Qualcomm could use the patents of the Japanese companies as freely as it liked.
The Korean anti-trust authorities fined Qualcomm $200m for anti-competitive practices which are believed to consist of charging licensees of CDMA technology lower prices for Qualcomm chips, and charging companies which don't buy Qualcomm chips, a higher price for licensing CDMA technology. The EU is currently investigating Qualcomm.
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