We could soon find out why the lawyers misled the court in the Broadcom vs Qualcomm case which turned on the question of whether any Qualcomm employee had sat on an industry standards-setting body.
The mystery will now be revealed why Qualcomm lawyers told a US court that no Qualcomm employee had attended the committee, when internal documents showed that a Qualcomm employee had sat on the committee.
For misleading the court, six Qualcomm lawyers have been reported for ethics violations to the State Bar of California. The lawyers say that, when they tell their story, they will be exonerated.
But, until now, they have been prevented from telling their story by the rule of attorney-client privilege, which means they must keep communications between client and lawyer secret.
Although the lawyers asked Qualcomm if they would agree to the lifting of attorney-client privilege so that they could tell their story, Qualcomm refused.
And there it lay for a while, with the lawyers gagged, and likely to be punished.
Then Qualcomm made a mistake. It filed declarations with the court criticising its own lawyers.
Following those declarations, US District Judge Rudi Brewster ruled that one of the exceptions to the attorney-client privilege rule, the exception of self-defence, should apply in this case because Qualcomm tried to clear itself while criticizing the lawyers.
So now we may find the answer to this curious case.
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