14 DAY TRIAL // The Qualcomm-Nokia intellectual battle seems to be continuing as recently Qualcomm has announced that it is rejecting the Finish manufacturer's latest payment offer of $20 million and the accompanying multiple pages of terms upon which Nokia conditioned its payment.
The two companies have been suing each other in different jurisdictions in the US and Europe for months, with the result being the same. While Nokia claims that Qualcomm is charging too much for its IP portfolio, Qualcomm believes that Nokia's offer is too small. Important licensing pacts between the two companies have expired this week.
According to Qualcomm, Nokia's attempted payment is only a fraction of the royalty that the company agreed to in the negotiations between the two companies and is also only a small fraction of the well established value of Qualcomm's portfolio.
Moreover, it looks like the attempted payments are a mere fraction of the rates that Nokia itself is aiming to impose when attempting to enforce it on its patents. Yesterday, the Finland-based phone company had announced that it "has paid less than 3 percent aggregate license fees on WCDMA handset sales under all its patent license agreements" and that the handset related royalty payments it had made would represent the whole sum that Nokia was meant to pay to Qualcomm under the agreement.
Qualcomm's view on this is different, and the company believes that, if this were to be true it would mean Nokia has seriously underpaid the royalties owed under the parties inked deal in 2001.Thus, Nokia would be in material breach of the agreement. Qualcomm has also announced that it plans to address this potential breech through legal and contractual channels.
"The attempted payment also represents only a small fraction of the well established value of Qualcomm's patent portfolio -- a value which has been repeatedly validated by the more than 70 royalty-bearing WCDMA license agreements Qualcomm has signed with the world's largest vendors of wireless products," Qualcomm said in a statement.