South Korea Fines Qualcomm $854M For Violating Competition Laws

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South Korea just slapped Qualcomm with a $854 million fine, the largest fine ever levied in that country, for abusing its dominant market position. According to the Korea Fair Trade Commission, Qualcomm has been forcing handset makers to pay royalties for an unnecessarily broad set of patents as part of sales of its modem chips.

South Korea's antitrust regulator fined Qualcomm Inc 1.03 trillion won ($854 million) for what it called unfair business practices in patent licensing and modem chip sales, a decision the U.S. chipmaker said it will challenge in court. The fine, the largest ever levied in South Korea, marks the latest antitrust setback for Qualcomm's most profitable business of licensing wireless patents to the mobile industry, at a time when the business is facing headwinds from a cooling smartphone market.
 
Buy our chip and also pay for our patents! New kind of patent troll here. lol!
 
Qualcomm also restricted competition by refusing or limiting licensing of its standard essential patents related to modem chips to rival chipmakers such as Intel Corp (INTC.O), Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) and MediaTek Inc (2454.TW), the regulator said, hindering their sales and leaving their products vulnerable to lawsuits.
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And that's where it came from.

It seems Qualcomm owns a few key mobile patents and wouldn't license to others, mainly Samsung - a South Korean company - who also makes competitive mobile SoC's.

This is likely the reason why Samsung phones have two models. An international version featuring their Exynos chipset and the NA version featuring Qualcomm's chipset.

I'm thinking this boils down to them saying "if you want our patent portfolio for North America, you have to buy our chipset."
 
If I own a company and I don't want to license my patents, I shouldn't have to. I don't see what the issue is here.
 
auntjemima said:
If I own a company and I don't want to license my patents, I shouldn't have to. I don't see what the issue is here.
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It's kinda a tricky situation. On one hand, I agree. On the other hand, it's a very anti-competitive move that has been used to hurt innovation.

The Wright Brothers come to mind. Around the time of their maiden flight, other planes were in development. Not too long afterwards, those planes also flew - for longer. The Wright's held the patents for a ton of plane items (like wings), and refused to license to anyone else, stifling innovation for years. It wasn't until around WW1 when the US Govt realized how far behind they were with aerial vehicles that they forced the Wright's to license out the patents or have them revoked.

Another case is that of RCA who owned numerous radio based patents and used those to stifle any competition - including the invention of the TV. They sued that inventor in patent court and tied him up for years to prevent that invention from coming to market as it would directly challenge their radio empire. Thing is, he didn't violate their patents for his invention. They were just being dicks.
 
Spidey329 said:
It's kinda a tricky situation. On one hand, I agree. On the other hand, it's a very anti-competitive move that has been used to hurt innovation.
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Agreed, now lets get rid of patents altogether.

With that said, so long as the patent system exists, if I don't want to license to you, fuck off.
 
Amd should sue nvidia so they can make nvidia gpus. See how crazy that sounds? If i make a item and don't want to sell it to you mke your own
 
Not the first fine Qualcomm got in this area. And I doubt it will be the last with their business practice.
 
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