Qualcomm sues Apple for violating Palm patents

Dec 4, 2017 12:37 GMT  ·  By
iPhone X comes with several gestures to compensate for the lack of a home button
   iPhone X comes with several gestures to compensate for the lack of a home button

Qualcomm has absolutely no reason to give up on the legal fight against Apple, and as part of the war that started earlier this year, the chip maker is now suing Cupertino for violating several Palm patents.

Recently, Apple filed a lawsuit against Qualcomm for alleged patent infringement with its Snapdragon processors, and now Qualcomm hits back with some claims of its own.

The San Diego-based firm says Apple should be banned from selling the iPhone 8 and iPhone X models in the United States due to several patent infringement cases that concern technologies which it invented and help boost bandwidth, save power, and enhance photos from dual-lens camera systems.

One particular claim indicates that the iPhone X gesture-based navigation system copies Palm’s webOS, which is protected by patents that Qualcomm purchased in 2014 from HP.

Not a response to Apple’s lawsuits

Comparison videos such as the one at the end of the article show striking similarities between the iPhone X and webOS navigation interface, with the latter first introduced back in 2010 when Palm’s investments in mobile were a big thing. Apple unveiled iPhone X in September, while sales started on November 3.

Even though at first glance it looks like Qualcomm’s new lawsuits are a response to Apple’s latest legal claims, the company says this isn’t the case and the timing is just a coincidence.

“You can’t react that quickly to file lawsuits,” Qualcomm General Counsel Don Rosenberg was quoted as saying. “We were in the process of filing three new district court cases in San Diego today, and one new ITC case in Washington, D.C. Those involve a group of 16 patents that are additional to the ones we have already sued them on, and five of those 16 are ones we are suing them on in the ITC seeking an exclusion order.”

Apple is yet to comment on this new lawsuit, but make sure that you watch the video below to understand what Qualcomm actually refers to when claiming that the iPhone X copies the webOS gesture-based navigation system.