&”W decided not to ride to the Qualcomm’s rescue. The Bush administration has chosen to uphold an import ban on cell phones containing Qualcomm chips, the latest chapter in an ongoing patent dispute between Qualcomm and rival Broadcom over cell phone-chip patents,” Joshua Lipton reports for Forbes.
“Susan Schwab, the U.S. Trade Representative, declined to overrule the U.S. International Trade Commission because the conditions were not ‘extraordinary,'” Lipton reports.
“On June 7, Qualcomm suffered a serious setback when the International Trade Commission said it would ban imports into the United States of new cell phones manufactured with Qualcomm’s chips. The agency ruled that some of Qualcomm’s chips infringed on Broadcom’s patents,” Lipton reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader ;MacVicta” for the heads up.]
On July 19, Verizon Wireless struck a licensing pact with Broadcom, agreeing to pay Broadcom a $6-per-device licensing fee, subject to certain caps, to bypass the ban and continue importing new phones. Look for the other “iPhone-less” U.S. carriers to scurry around in similar fashion. As we’ve said previously, now all they need is is a time machine set five years in the future, so they can go get a phone that’s even remotely comparable to Apple’s iPhone. Dr. Emmett Brown, paging Dr. Emmett Brown…