Out of court settlement with Apple could happen, says Qualcomm CEO

In an interesting turn of event, Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf has said that out of court settlement with Apple is still possible. Smartphone manufacturing giant Apple and chipmaking company Qualcomm have been fighting legal spat in different countries for the past six months.

“There’s not really anything new going on,” Mollenkopf said speaking at the Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen. About the Apple dispute, he explained: “those things tend to get to resolved out of court and there’s no reason why I wouldn’t expect that to be the case here.”

The legal spat started when Apple sued Qualcomm for $1 billion, accusing the company of not paying quarterly rebates. Moreover, Apple also argued in the court that the chipmaking company can only charge for either patent license or chip, the company cannot charge Apple for both at the same time. Similarly, the chipmaking company counter sued Apple, accusing Apple of breaking licence agreements.

Furthermore, legal spat became more intense when Qualcomm went to International Trade Commission (ITC) to get a ban on Apple products from entering the US. If the appeal of chipmaking company results in a success then 40 percent of Apple’s total sale will halt. It would be worth mentioning here that according to Bloomberg the tech company has generated almost $86.6 billion in its Americas’ region last year.

Apart from Qualcomm and Apple legal spat, tech giant Apple has recently reconciled with Nokia over patent issues while signing different agreements in the process.